


rate of recidivism

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Brainwashing, Depersonalization, Depression, Derealization, Dissociation, First Time, Flashbacks, Food Issues, Gore, M/M, Mental Conditioning, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Past Bucky/OFCs, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Sexual Assault, Torture, invasive thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:25:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 92,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So here you are, in the future. The rest is more complicated.</p><p>OR: Bucky Barnes learns how to be angry again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tagged warnings; this fic contains many situations with the potential to trigger, and I have tried to tag for them all. Specific content warnings for particularly disturbing situations can be found in the notes at the bottom of each chapter. If, in the course of reading, you find something I have not tagged for which you would like to request be tagged, please let me know.
> 
> The soundtrack for this story can be found [here for download.](http://www.4shared.com/zip/z_0Urt8Nce/rate_of_recidivism.html) Quite a bit of at-least-tangentially-related artwork can be found in [my art tag](http://dorkbait.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art) on Tumblr (link NSFW!). A lot of inexplicably weird stuff, including outtakes from this story and texts from Bucky, should you for some reason want to see those things, can be found on [this sideblog](http://james-bukkake-barnes.tumblr.com/) I share with my best friend.
> 
> All my love and gratitude to my dear friend Eli, without whom this story would not exist. Words cannot express how much your patience, support, and encouragement has meant to me, nor how deeply appreciative I am of the fact that you edited the word "shit" into the Google doc at every given opportunity.

__

  


_"I closed my eyes in obedience. I felt a light kiss on my lips, where there was always a little fresh blood which never would go away. And then I fell asleep._

_Next morning someone woke me: I had to have my wounds dressed. When I was finally awake I turned quickly to the mattress next to mine. On it lay a stranger I'd never seen before._

_Dressing the wound hurt. Everything that has happened to me since has hurt. But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into myself where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master."_  
 _\-- Hermann Hesse, Demian_  


_01\. oblivion_

You wrestle him onto the bed - his breathing is fast, heart rate elevated, and his skin is slightly slippery to the touch. A higher baseline temperature than the average human; this has been mentioned many times. It is a mostly-useless detail that is generally unimportant to mission parameters, past or present. He is wearing pajamas, because it is two a.m. and you woke him up, having judged that the element of surprise would give you an advantage.

You have not misjudged the situation. You have been trained; you are very good at reading body language, and the way that Captain Rogers frequently stands closer to you than to other people, that he makes an effort to touch you as often as is feasible, watches you when he thinks you are not looking, are all parts of a puzzle that is not difficult to put together. There is a certain intent that is difficult to miss when you are searching for it. Once you were certain of what Captain Rogers wanted from you (from James Buchanan Barnes, rather), all that was required was a plan of action.

When you push him down, putting both hands on his hips to hold him in place, he goes abruptly very still. His hands clench into fists in the bedsheets as you pull his flannel pants down. You look up at him and he is looking at you with an expression nothing short of shell-shocked ( _shell shock: the reaction of some soldiers in World War I to the trauma of battle, a reaction to the intensity of the bombardment and fighting that produced helplessness_ ). You smile with your teeth, a smile you practiced after seeing it in the Smithsonian, and mouth the bulge of his erection through his underwear. You have not misjudged the situation.

"Buck," he says to you. "What--?"

"Shh," you answer, hooking your fingers into his underwear and dragging it down. Not too far; you leave the briefs around his legs, restraining them slightly, though certainly the fabric would provide no significant resistance if he were to exert any strength against it. You don't bother with subtlety; you swallow him down, your mouth sliding along his cock until your nose is pressed against the skin of his belly. His hands touch your hair and shoulders for a moment - almost as if he wants to push you away but is uncertain and unwilling to risk hurting you (ridiculous, a gentle push from him would never be forceful enough to injure you).

You look up at him again and his eyes are closed. His expression looks almost like pain, now, but you are aware that sexual pleasure and pain often share coinciding physical appearances. His hands drop away again, balling up at his sides. He is silent. Perhaps you're not performing adequately.

You frown a little and concentrate on moving your mouth - varying the suction, working your tongue along the shaft. His hips jerk in response a few times and you focus on those areas, but no matter what you do, he stays quiet. His hands in fists. Resisting.

You let him slip out of your mouth with a wet pop and he jerks, opening his eyes for a moment and looking down at you. You don't smile at him this time; you just lick your lips and use your hands, still on his hips, to turn him over onto his stomach. For whatever reason, he doesn't resist that. He pushes up on one of his elbows and looks at you over his shoulder for a moment. You find this facial expression of his difficult to read; it's one you've never seen before, mostly perplexity, but part of it is something else, as well - something you can't define.

There's lubricant in the pocket of your pants. His breath speeds up when he hears the cap snick open. Anticipation and fear are hard to distinguish, physiologically. You think maybe you should have kept him on his back so that you could watch his face instead, but you also feel you have committed to this position at least for the time being. To turn him back over would reveal too much uncertainty.

Your hand is slick with lubricant. You push one finger inside Steve. He makes a sharp, shocked noise, but he neither looks back at you nor pulls away, so you work your finger in and out. He makes another grunt at the first touch but then goes silent again except for his ragged, labored breathing. You manipulate the angle of his hips a little with your free hand and slip a second finger inside him.

After two and one half minutes, the grip of his body has loosened enough that your fingers slide easily. You unbutton and unzip your pants, watching the dance of muscles tightening and jumping in his back as he breathes. Your cock is only half-hard (a perplexing malfunction) and it takes several strokes of your hand to reach a full erection. When you push inside his body, it is very tight, and he trembles. You think perhaps you have been remiss in not preparing him more thoroughly.

Still he makes no noise at all. You put your hands on his hips and guide them, steadying him at the angle that should provide optimum stimulation. He is very tense. His muscles quiver. You have not misjudged the situation; Steven Rogers and James Barnes have been friends since the 1920s. They were the most steadfast of companions. They were very close. Steve Rogers licks his lower lip sometimes when he looks at you. Sometimes he touches your face, strokes down the line of your cheek, neck, and shoulder, as if you are a frightened cat. He risked his life in the foolish endeavor of attempting to break your programming. He accepted you when you came to him. He let you into his home - a weapon, a dangerous tool - and he does not lock his bedroom door at night to keep you out. You are very good at reading body language. You would not have made a mistake about something so crucial.

The minutes pass by; you count seconds in your head. Captain Rogers does not reach orgasm, and neither do you. Eventually the friction starts to irritate, so you pull away. He stays exactly where he is, face down on the bed. You pull up your pants and back toward the door, not turning away in case he decides to retaliate for your unsatisfactory performance.

He doesn't move. You go to your room and lock the door behind you. You lie awake for the rest of the night.

Several months later, when your brain has recovered enough from years of trauma that your memory is no longer a blank, empty void - months later, when you can see around the holes in your consciousness enough to start to develop a framework for who James Buchanan Barnes used to be - you start to realize how epically, how catastrophically you fucked up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Under the influence of HYDRA programming, Bucky has a sexual encounter with Steve which Steve does not consent to.


	2. soap bubbles, thomas couture, c.a. 1859

_02\. soap bubbles, thomas couture, c.a. 1859_

Steve, stubborn bastard that he is, is incredibly, unbelievably patient. You know, how could you not know, how badly he misses the man that you used to be, but you can't account for the fact that he lets you stay even after it becomes very clear that the man you used to be is not, under any circumstances, coming back. 

You don't remember a lot of the stuff that you did between the time you went AWOL from Hydra and the time you woke up in a Brooklyn apartment with the memory of short little Steve Rogers and his paint-splattered smock fresh in your mind. Your long-term memory is recovered, and your short-term memory is just fine. It's the middle distance that's fuzzy. Probably just as well - half of the long-term memories you have, you don't really want anyway, and the fewer flashbacks to mugging and murdering innocent people just to get by, the better, in your opinion. 

The long-long term memories - you wish you had a million of those. You wish you had so many that they'd crowd out all the rest and you could just forget that anything between, say, 1943 and 2013 ever happened. 

You don't talk a lot, those first few months. You're afraid that if you open your mouth you'll start and you won't be able to stop. You'll say something that even Steven Grant Rogers can't forgive, and then -- then you'll be fucked.

It does make him sad, though. By all accounts Bucky Barnes - you, that's you, you have to keep reminding yourself not to think of Bucky Barnes as a separate person - was an excellent conversationalist. The you of the past was interesting and funny, without being particularly verbose. The you of the past seems to have been someone genuinely worth missing.

It turns out you can get a lot done without talking much, though. Steve has a routine, it seems, at least for certain things. He gets up at the same time every morning, leaves for a while to go for a run, and comes back within a predictable interval. He makes breakfast. He doesn't seem to be working right now, which makes sense, considering the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. came down along with the helicarriers that he destroyed, and he doesn't seem to have a lot of reasons to leave the house. 

That turns out to be one of the things that makes you sad, in a weird way. You think it's sadness, anyway, a sort of dull ache in the middle of your back that won't go away and doesn't seem attached to any particular muscle group. If ever you had thought about Steve going on without you, and you had had to, considering you were the one who was supposed to be going to war and Steve was supposed to be the one who stayed in Brooklyn and kept it the way it should be in your memories, you had imagined him living a full life. "A full life," whatever that means. Probably even then you knew that was a dumb thing to imagine, but you had to believe that some girl would see in Steve what you saw in him, and she'd love him, and she'd make him happy.

Well, that - doesn't seem to have happened.

Anyway, Steve always comes home from his run and makes breakfast. He eats a lot. You have to teach yourself again to experience hunger like a human being and not a machine. The way you feel hunger is a lot like the way you feel all sensations of pain, in that it's slightly detached and it takes you a deliberate act to recognize what it is and that it's coming from you. You don't really remember them feeding you. You do remember -

You do remember a mission that was five days long. It wasn't supposed to go that long, but the mark happened to be particularly savvy and you couldn't get a clear shot. This was back when they were still letting you out by yourself. You didn't hear anything from them except a crackle of static every night and a request for a mission report. By the end of the fifth day your whole body was shaking and your vision was red around the edges, but you made the shot. You always made the shot. You always had. You could be shaking out of your worthless skin and your hands on the rifle would be steady.

They weren't happy that it took so long. There was -- some kind of punishment. It was only one of the junior technicians who took a look at you and realized you hadn't eaten in five days. After all, you couldn't be trusted to feed yourself. You didn't remember how.

\- Steve makes eggs with vegetables and meat mixed in most mornings. At first you think he just makes a lot but then you realize he's waiting for you to come and eat with him, so you do. It turns out there's a lot you can do in silence. It turns out that sitting across from him at his breakfast table and just being quiet isn't so bad. He smiles at you a little every time you emerge from your room. 

So he's not working, and he doesn't have a lot of visitors. You're sure that the people who worked with him are smart enough to know where he is, which means they're leaving him alone deliberately. Maybe because of you. The idea sends a shock of panic through your whole body - the idea that someone could know you're here, because nobody's really supposed to know you're anywhere. You choke it down.

You choke it down and keep going. You spend hours just lost in your own head, trying to understand the ragged framework of memories, or on Steve's computer, when he's asleep in the darkest hours of the morning. Whole days just disappear as you try to remember yourself. It turns out to be easier to remember Steve than it is to remember yourself most of the time, so you focus on that, when you can focus on anything. 

Gradually you start to feel less like the whirring underparts of the city - all the people who walk by the window outside, the cars honking, the sound of air conditioners flicking on and off - are a threat, or even that they're worthy of vigilance. Part of you still knows that the more complacent you get, the more likely something is to happen, but you can't -- you can't maintain at the level you were operating at before. You're not sure you ever could have.

Maybe it's just that you get tired of watching Steve coop himself up in his own apartment, too. You can see his misery even if he masks it pretty well (you've had a lot of practice with Steve Rogers and misery), and it makes you miserable in turn to be the cause of it. Whatever the case, he's about to go out one morning, his footsteps as he pads around the entryway drinking a glass of water and pulling his sweatshirt over his head, so you pull on a shirt to go with your sweatpants and a sweatshirt of your own (it's probably his, really, you don't know where these clothes came from, so that would be the logical assumption) and follow him.

He looks at you, surprised, but has the sense not to question you. He looks like he wants to say something but doesn't. The two of you walk downstairs and he holds the front door open for you, and you're surprised how good the cool air, not yet warmed by the morning sun, feels. 

"I like to go up to the bridge and back," he says. "Sometimes further, if I feel like it."

Considering his metabolism, the amount of time he is usually gone, you think it must often be further, by a considerable distance, but you can see that he's giving you the benefit of the doubt here, so you just nod, and follow him when he starts off.

Turns out it was good thinking to give you the option of going the shorter distance. Endurance and speed have nothing to do with it - he's easy for you to keep up with, long even strides and breaths so measured you keep pace by them, but it's the people - you're watching them even when you're trying not to. Being outside is harder than you remember. Being exposed. 

You don't know what to do when you get back to the apartment, other than peel off the hoodie and sit waiting for Steve to make breakfast, so that's what you do. It's fine. It's just fine.

++

After that, you start making an effort to go outside more. Go outside, with Steve. Go places outside. You go running with him every morning and ignore how it becomes easier, ignore your mind's furious whispering that you are becoming desensitized, inviting disaster. It gets easier over time. The lack of difficulty is -- just that. A lack.

"I was thinking," says Steve one morning, taking you on a slight detour, "maybe we could stop for coffee today." 

There's coffee in Steve's apartment. Plenty of coffee, two different coffee machines. You are stopped at a red light, and you look at him. He's grown about two weeks’ worth of beard, and it's not a very good disguise with his face ubiquitous on bus stop billboards around every corner in the city, but nobody really bothers him. And you -- you're supposed to be dead, so maybe nobody will recognize you.

"Okay," you say. You put your hood up as you follow him into the shop, and you stand with your face slanted away from the girl working the counter, just in case. 

She knows who Steve is, says hello to him by name but without the kind of stilted formality you might expect, which suggests to you that place this was some kind of routine of his. Maybe before you slipped back into his life. You feel panicked for a moment, because someone who knows who Steve Rogers is is also more likely to recognize the face of James Buchanan Barnes, but Steve just says to you, "What do you want, Bu--uh, buddy?" and you order an Americano and the two of you wait for your drinks at the end of the bar, and walk back to Steve's apartment together, and that's it. 

So, not everything has to be a disaster. 

You don't go back to the coffee shop with him the next time, though. You don't want to become familiar there. You don't want them to know your name or your face. You're not sure you ever will.

Steve is a little bit disappointed that you just shake your head and continue down the block when he asks. But he doesn't push you, never pushes you. Sometimes that, too, feels wrong.

A couple weeks later you are deep into nineteen ninety five (you've spread out into the living room, because Steve leaves you alone with the books and his computer most of the time anyway) when Steve pads up behind you and says, "I was thinking about going into Manhattan. To the museums, maybe. You know, I always -- liked art."

"I know," you say, closing the Rohde book on Srebrenica and craning your neck to look up at him. He has a hopeful expression on his face. You don't so much remember Steve in museums - you wouldn't have been able to afford them, probably - as you remember Steve hunched over a big piece of paper carefully hand-lettering signage, or Steve with his face buried in his sketchbook when you glanced at him over your dance partner's shoulder.

After a beat, he looks away from you, down to the book. "Were you -- there?"

He asks it like he's pulling out a tooth that's been bothering him for a while. You touch the cover of the book, which is very plain. It could be about anything. "I don't know," you say, finally, honestly. "I could have been. Hydra was." You close his computer, too, and stand up. "Okay." 

"Okay?"

"Let's go. The museum." You incline your head toward the door, and he glances down at himself. It's the middle of the afternoon but he's still wearing sweatpants. As are you, but you don't really own any clothing of your own, so.

He seems to have the same thought as you. "You can uh - borrow something, if you want," he says. None of it is quite going to fit you, but it's probably better than wandering around a cultural institution wearing sweatpants. You can see the gears turning in his head as he thinks that you should have your own clothing.

"I should probably get some clothes of my own," you say. You smile a little, a tight thing that stretches the corners of your mouth. "Obtain legally. Not steal." You showed up at his house wearing scrubs because they were convenient, and now you realize what a ridiculous picture you would have made at the time, ragged hair and a week's worth of stubble and dead, dead eyes. You probably looked more like a patient than a doctor. 

"Yeah," says Steve, "yeah, we can do that. Uh. I'll go change and see what I can find."

The white t-shirt is fine; you would have preferred something different but the jeans will do. You get a pair of sunglasses and Steve's black baseball cap, too, and the ever-present hoodie to cover up your arm. You've gotten pretty used to stuffing your hands in your pockets when you're in public. On the way out of the apartment, as he's locking the door, Steve does that thing where he pauses as he suddenly has a thought. "What?" you ask him.

"We should get a cab," he says. "I was thinking we'd take the subway, but--"

"We can take the subway." Your skin crawls a little at the thought of so many people in such a small space, and Steve looks at you in surprise. "We can take the subway," you insist.

The station is crowded, and Steve turns toward you, shielding your view of most of the people waiting on the platform with his body. "Listen, we can just get a cab," he says again. "We might have to stand the whole way, and --"

"Listen," you parrot him. You're not smiling but you feel like you could be. "We can take the subway. I promise I'll tell you in advance if I start feeling stabby, all right, Rogers?" You bump your shoulder against him, and he looks absurdly pleased for a second. "Stop embarrassing yourself."

The two of you stand close together on the train the whole way into the city and it doesn't even really bother you the way it should when people brush against you getting on and off. Their behavior patterns are easily characterized as nonthreatening. They fit neatly into categories which cause you no real concern. There is a certain comfort in knowing that you and Steve are easily the two most physically capable operatives in probably the entire New York subway system. 

At some point the crush of people makes your mind want to wander along certain pathways: Why isn't Hydra looking for you, why hasn't someone come for you yet, why are they just leaving you alone? You aren't stupid enough to believe that, because Pierce is dead and Zola at least theoretically eradicated, the whole of Hydra has fallen apart. It was in their very credo, after all, that they only became stronger when dealt a mortal blow. Maybe it's just taking them longer than usual to regroup.

The museum probably would not be the ideal place to do it, anyway. There are too many people around. Too much possibility for escape; the Met is labyrinthine even when you're actively trying not to get lost. They would want to corner you.

You don't know if you like art or if you don't like art, but you like to watch Steve looking at art. He says something to the woman heading up the line for members only and she nods and says something else to a security guard. It's probably just Steve being Steve, trying to ensure that his presence here doesn't cause a fuss. Even with the beard, he's pretty noticeable. People look at him, because he has some kind of quality like he draws the light. He didn't used to have that; you think you remember. You think, hey, maybe that was me, once.

Steve smiles at the paintings like they're old friends. You wonder how much he knows about them; he was always interested in art, and with the advent of this new age you live in, information is more accessible now than it ever was then. Maybe it's not the paintings that are old friends, but the artists behind them.

You think you like the Degas. The dancers. They make something inside you hurt a little bit. There's a familiarity there you can't begin to touch on - the phantom whispers of the girls and the shh-shh of their big tulle skirts. Their bony knees and the knobs of their strong little spines.

"This one reminds me of you," Steve says. You look at the painting - it's ridiculous, the painting's of a young boy, but - well, you were a young boy once too.

You squint at it, the boy's dreamy, bored expression and his abundant black hair. It's a nice painting. You turn your gaze back to Steve. It's nice that it reminds him of you. It wouldn't have been your choice.

As you're walking through the hall of arms and armor you hear the sound of music, and follow it to see a string quartet setting up to practice in one of the chambers that houses old instruments. There's a sign about their performance, just a hasty message printed on a piece of paper that says they're rehearsing. Using original instruments.

The instruments don't sound old. The tones that come out of them as the musicians play them sound just as vital, just as alive as the people themselves. "It's something," Steve says next to you, his hands in his pockets.

It is something. Whatever you both had to go through to get here, you are suddenly and profoundly grateful that you get to witness Steve Rogers in this serendipitous moment. The musicians pulling something fresh, something alive, out of instruments that are centuries old.

Somebody asks Steve for his autograph on your way out, and he smiles very graciously and signs it _To Ava_ , while you turn away so she won't get a good look at your face. She doesn't care about you, anyway. You get it. You don't need an explanation for that.

"Hey," says Steve, as you stand outside, on the long marble steps of the museum. You look across the street, into the buildings, looking for the telltale signs of a sniper watching, but all you see is taxi cabs and children with their parents as school lets out for the day. "You want to get a cab?"

You probably should get a cab. It would make more sense. You feel kind of itchy and tired, overstimulated, but Steve looks happier and more relaxed than you've seen him in a while, like he's finally getting that god damn life he deserved, and you don't want to take it away from him. You don't want to remind him. "No, let's just take the train back," you say.

The train's even busier this time around, and you have to stand the whole way again, your good hand holding onto the railing while you tuck the other into your pocket. Steve sort of gets crushed against you as a wave of people enters the train, but the prolonged contact doesn't bother you. He's just quiet, his eyes moving over the people in the car before coming to rest on you again.

He reaches out with one hand, telegraphing his movements, and takes your left hand, in your pocket, his thumb smoothing across the knuckles. You don't feel it, not really, but it's still - it makes something twist in your stomach. You look across at him and frown a little, your expression making a question mark that you're not quite sure how to vocalize.

He just smiles at you and holds your hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers a mission where he did not eat for five days and was punished afterwards.


	3. a gentle hum

_ 03\. a gentle hum _

Soho is -- problematic. At first you think, all these people, walking around fearless, have no idea what kind of danger they're in. They don't know that something terrible could happen at any time, that they're totally exposed. But then you remember reading about the Chitauri, in 2012, and you realize that they must all know, but have no choice and just keep living their lives anyway. They get up every day and go outside into a world that may very well kill them on a whim, and somehow they exist that way.

Two years later there's little evidence of what happened, but if you know where to look, there are signs. You and Steve must have lived the same way, back in the day. The whole country fresh off one great war and fixing to dive into another. You don't remember feeling fear that way. Not at all. Now it's more a gentle hum of anxiety for all these men and women and everything in-between walking around with their soft bodies and no armor at all. All those vulnerabilities, exposed.

Steve's with you because he's always with you. You know it's something that ought to offend you, but it doesn't. He knows how to act in public; his presence is solid, grounding. You think he can be trusted to keep you in line. Ironically, that used to be the opposite way around.

You've done a lot of work online in the past few days. Going through news footage and photos, looking for yourself. From what you've found so far, there don't seem to be any pictures of you without the mask on, which is frankly a relief. Without the armor and the guns and with the ragged ends of your hair trimmed to a uniform length (you did this yourself, in the bathroom with a pair of scissors, two mirrors, the steadiness of your left hand), only a diehard Captain America fan would have even the narrowest chance of identifying you as James Barnes or as the masked attacker who laid waste to Washington D.C..

It surprises you how many photos of Steve there are; most of them are grainy cell phone shots taken from a distance, probably just kids with their camera phones. A few of them seem to be a bit more professional, higher resolution and better details, but those ones don't look recent. You aren't in any of them, so it doesn't matter anyway. You think you would notice, if someone was pointing a camera in your direction. It's one of those things that got built in.

Steve is probably the one person who wouldn't be surprised by how fast you pick things up. Partially it's because of how much information you have essentially at your fingertips courtesy of the internet, and part of it's just because that's how you've always been. Steve's one of probably very few people - maybe the only person - who would know that about you. You were always good at learning how to do things.

You don't blink at any of the prices in the stores that Steve takes you into, or the ridiculous overabundance of stores themselves, the manifold of clothing inside. You've had enough time in this version of the world now to understand the consequences of inflation, of exponentially increased leisure time. You even know the state of Steve's bank accounts, all that back pay carefully adjusted to compensate for almost seventy years spent frozen.

It's not hard to pick out clothing for yourself. You're glad to have Steve there as a sort of buffer between you and the salespeople, who are just doing their jobs but who you would rather have leave you alone. As much as you wish you did, you don't have the patience for making small talk with strangers yet.

Steve insists that you try the clothing on, as does the svelte young man who has attached himself to the two of you. You're uncomfortable with him looking at you, and from inside the fitting room you can hear him ask Steve questions about you, questions which Steve gamely deflects again and again. You have a feeling your presence isn't going to go unnoticed this outing. Just as long as nobody takes your picture.

By the time you get through trying on the clothes the fitting room's size and the harsh lighting has made you feel claustrophobic and faintly short of breath. You open the door to hand Steve what you've chosen for yourself, and he glances in at you curiously, still dressed in the mish-mash of the last few items you tried on. His eyebrows raise slightly and you almost laugh at being the focus of the patented Steve Rogers disapproving glance. "What?" you ask, bracketing the door with your good arm and standing so that whoever is looking from the outside will only be able to see the back of Steve and very little of you.

"I guess I -- wouldn't have guessed you'd choose pants that tight," Steve says. You glance down at yourself and then back in the mirror. They're not particularly tight. They don't feel constricting. The only frame of reference for Steve's disapproval is that these are nowhere near the style of pants you would have chosen in the 1940s. But you're not in the 1940s.

"Have you looked at what the other guys in the store are wearing?" you ask Steve succinctly, and he blinks; Steve has always had a great eye for color, composition, spatial relationships, but never in your life can you remember him ever giving a shit about what he or anyone else was wearing, unless it was a uniform. You, on the other hand - you've had plenty of time to notice the silhouettes favored by the guys you pass occasionally on your morning runs, the baristas at the coffee shops, and you are the sort to notice.

Steve glances back at the young man and then toward you again. "Yeah, you're right," he admits, maybe a little bit sheepish. "I guess -- I'm just not used to seeing you wearing --"

"You're not really used to seeing me wearing anything except body armor, sweats, and outfits from seventy years ago." You dredge up a small smile for him and are pleased to see it echoed back on his face. "I get it." Your eyes track over Steve's face to the blank wall of the fitting room, and you exhale. "I need -- can you get those rung out?"

Steve's gaze searches your face for a moment and he nods, gathering up the bundle of pants and t-shirts and pulling the door to the fitting room closed after himself. You blink at the no-color of the wall --

\-- "It's like dressing a doll," says one of the techs, yanking at the straps of your jacket. You're breathing heavily, there's blood sliding down your forehead and dripping into your eye. "Even children are more cooperative than this. Petra, give me a hand, will you? We need to get him cleaned up before Pierce gets here."

The woman gets down at your feet and undoes your boots, pulls them off, regards your curled toes for a moment. "Didn't we ever teach him how to do this himself?" she asks, and accidentally makes eye contact with you; it's almost like she's asking you a question --

You change back into Steve's clothes and you are not shaking or sweating or even breathing heavily when you come out of the fitting room. You manage to say thank you to the young man, who smiles at you in a dazzling display of white teeth, a smile which reminds you profoundly and painfully of Gabe Jones. "Of course, sir," he says, and he shows no sign at all of recognizing you. It makes sense. You are nobody to recognize.

Steve has called a cab, or rather, some black car which is probably not a cab and probably connected in one way or another to whatever remains of S.H.I.E.L.D. or possibly just Stark Industries; either way you have little energy left to worry about it by the time you slide into the back seat with Steve. You wish the driver wasn't there. It's easier to just be around Steve.

"Do you feel," Steve says, pausing before the word 'better,' and then amending, "Does it feel good to have your own clothes again?"

You look at him for a second and then back out the window, leaning your forehead against the cool glass for a moment. "It feels more like being a person again," you answer.

His hand touches your back, in between your shoulderblades, and rubs gently. Slow circles. Soothing. Like you might pet a wild animal. "And thank you," you add after a long pause. "I know I'm livin' off your kindness right now." You haven't forgotten that for a second.

"Of course," says Steve. "Of course."


	4. metonymy

  1. _metonymy_




Steve is arguing on the phone when you wake up - or rather, you wake up because Steve is arguing on the phone. You lay still in the darkness, listening to his voice. He's trying not to be loud, but he's terrible at not letting himself get riled up, and he gets loud when he gets mad, more often than not.

The argument's about you. Of course it is. Your presence here wasn't going to go unnoticed forever, and you have a lot of dirt behind you to answer for. You immediately start to wonder how they found you, but you've been sloppy as hell, and there are a million ways they could have found you - whoever they are. Not Hydra, hopefully. Hydra wouldn't be calling Steve Rogers on the phone. Maybe.

You roll out of bed and pull on a pair of pants and a t-shirt, grab the plain black baseball cap and the hoodie, toe on Steve's too-big borrowed shoes. You drag your fingers through your hair to get the worst of the tangles out, and open the door to the bedroom deliberately so that Steve will hear. He does, and gives you an eloquently guilty look, putting his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. You shake your head, making a dismissive hand gesture, and grab a twenty from the little jar that sits by the door to hold Steve's keys, small amounts of cash, and incremental change.

You jog down the stairs and out the door. Mornings are getting colder but the sky is still a bold, beautiful blue; winter hasn't leached out the color yet. You don't have to look at a watch to know it's about six in the morning, earlier than you usually wake up but not by a whole lot.

You walk to the coffee shop, which has just opened. The girl inside is the same girl you saw when you were in here with Steve before. She has orange lipstick and immaculate makeup despite the early hour. "Good morning," she says. The shop is otherwise empty. She squints at you, picking up a cup and a marker. "Steve's friend, right? Large extra hot Americano? That's you?"

You blink. She knows you somehow anyway, despite the fact that you've made an effort not to be known. She's not afraid of you, though. She's just doing her job. She has no reason to be afraid of you - less than she would of the average person, actually, considering that you are known by her to hang around with Captain America. "Yeah, that's me," you say after a beat. "Hey, can I get Steve's usual too, while I'm here?"

"Of course," she says, picking up another cup. Her nails are chrome silver. "His is on the house, all right? He always tips us way too much and he never lets us give him anything for free. It's always 'give it to the next guy,' or whatever."

"He's gonna be mad if he finds out," you say, handing her the twenty. When she gives your change back, you dump it all into the tip jar, and she shakes her head, smiling a little as she goes to make your drinks.

The Americano is hot enough to almost singe the roof of your mouth, which is how you like it. Your error in judgment, however, becomes apparent when you realize you can't carry two cups with one hand. The girl glances over as you pull the left sleeve of your hoodie down to cover your hand and just smiles again, apologetically, like she's sorry that something happened to you and now you feel like you have to hide it. If only she knew.

By the time you get back to the apartment your drink has cooled enough that you can drink it without burning yourself, and when you open the door Steve's sitting at the island with his chin in his hand and his phone next to him. He turns toward you as soon as you come in, blinking in surprise when he sees you holding the two drinks. You set his down in front of him and then sit down next to him. "Sorry," he says quietly, two fingers making a gesture to indicate the phone.

"It was gonna happen sooner or later." You pop the lid off your drink, unzipping your sweatshirt. "So, what, they want me to come in? Debrief me?" You leave off asking who exactly 'they' is for now. Even without S.H.I.E.L.D. at their beck and call, people like Maria Hill and Nicholas Fury still have people loyal to them, and while S.H.I.E.L.D. may be in smoking ruins, the Avengers and all they entail are fully intact, as far as you know.

"They wanted me to bring you in," Steve says. His tone makes it very clear that there's a difference between you coming in and him bringing you in. "I told them it wasn't going to happen."

"Yeah, and that went well, didn't it?" The corner of your mouth climbs up. "Hey, the girl at the coffee shop tried to give me your drink for free."

Steve laughs, rubbing his hands over his eyes. "They always do that. I always tell them not to."

"I put all the change in the tip jar as revenge." You bump your knee against Steve's. "Don't worry, your reputation is intact."

There's a few minutes of silence as you and Steve sit and drink your coffees and don't talk about him bringing you in or you going in or anything that might entail. "I was kind of -- surprised you went out by yourself," he says finally. "In a good way."

You shrug. You've started to feel like if they were going to find you here, they already would have. Bad feeling to have. Complacent. But it's crept in around the edges of everything anyway. "I figured if I got mugged I could probably handle it," you say.

"Well, thanks for the coffee," Steve says, turning toward you. He looks tired, but still better than he ever did back before the war. You reach up and cup the side of his face, moving your fingers over the line of his cheekbone and down where the beard starts. His skin feels the same as it used to.

"I mean, sure, but it was your money, buddy." You smile, and you lean in or maybe he leans in, or maybe you both do, or you were sitting too close together to begin with, but regardless of the trajectory the outcome is that you're kissing Steve Rogers.

He closes his eyes and leans into it; one hand is still on the coffee cup and one hand on his own leg like he's afraid if he touches you the illusion will shatter, or he'll spook you. His eyelashes are very long. You rack your brain -- did this happen before? Was this always there? How do you know if this is real or if it's just another thing that they --

He pulls away finally to breathe, with a little sound. His eyes are very bright and his face is very pink, and he's still holding his coffee cup. More than anything, he looks - scared.

You kiss him again so he'll stop looking scared. You are carefully aware of the pressure of your left hand against his face; you lift the right so that you are cradling his jaw in your hands, and finally his arms leave the table and come around you, his palms pressing flat against your back. He wants to draw you closer, but you maintain a degree of separation.

He -- somewhere inside you is the horrible knowledge that you did something terrible to him in that fuzzy time period you can't quite remember after you came to his apartment but before you really started to remember anything. You pull away and look at him again. He looks less scared, but --

"It's fine," you say. "I'll go in. If they have my files I don't know what else they want me to say, but I'll go in." You look away from him, turn the cup of coffee around and around on the table with your fingers on the rim.  _Yes, I'm the Winter Soldier, I've been living with Captain America for several months now and I have not killed him yet, so it seems I am unlikely to do so in the near future_ . Most of the trigger phrases you are aware of have already entered obsolescence; you being aware of them precludes their usefulness in the first place. Maybe they want to use you. It wouldn't be so bad - that, at least, you're used to.

Steve has a little line drawn between his eyebrows now, a very small, very careful frown. His expression is saying 'really?' clearly enough that he doesn't have to say it himself. "I owe them an explanation, don't I?" you ask, and shrug. "It'll be good to get out of the house, right?"

"You don't owe them anything," Steve says quietly. He picks up his phone and sends off a text message - you watch his fingers and come up with 'He said yes.'

The two of you take another one of those anonymous black cars to the monolithic Stark building that reminds you of the Triskelion. Human beings like to build tall things as a sign of their mastery of their environment -- more now than ever, it seems. Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow, level six target) is waiting for you in the lobby of the building; Steve is wearing an expression of thunderous displeasure which doesn't change even when he sees her. "Back from Europe," he says. It's not really a question.

"Nice to see you too, Rogers." She glances at you. "You take the Winter Soldier clothes shopping in Soho and you don't think anybody is going to notice?"

"I didn't really think I had anybody to answer to anymore," says Steve, folding his arms. You step out from where you've been standing slightly behind him and take your hands out of your pockets. Nothing to hide from Romanoff (Romanova, Rushman) that she doesn't already know.

She looks at you with a slight frown. You're wearing your own clothes but you still have on a pair of shoes borrowed from Steve, and you have no idea whatsoever if your face is telling her anything. You don't have a clue what your expression is right now. You don't like this building - too white, too sterile. Reminds you of a hospital. They used to be unhappy when you got things dirty, and you were always getting things dirty. Black shoes, black jacket, tracking mud and blood and gun oil wherever you went. You flex the fingers of your left hand.

"Can we get this party started?" you ask eventually, when it becomes clear that the standoff between Steve and Romanoff isn't anywhere near coming to an end. Last time you saw her it was obvious that she and Steve were working together, and you suppose that Steve is affronted by her choosing to ally with Stark or whoever else is behind this, rather than him, now.

"Are we waiting for security?" Steve asks Romanoff, and you shake your head as she smirks that tiny knowing smirk that's barely a smile at all.

"They sent her as security," you say, standing a little closer to Steve. Present a united front. "Figured she'd have a better chance against me if anything went haywire. Probably also didn't want to overwhelm me. Send one person, seems less like I'm being -- arrested. Brought in against my will." You glance at him. "So let's go."

She leads you to an elevator and up you go. The feeling of the elevator makes you clench your jaw, a steady pain gathering at your temples, but it's okay. You're going up, not down. When you get there it'll be easy. You know how to give a mission report. You know how to let the techs examine you. All you have to do is behave yourself, and everything will be fine.

Steve touches your hand, and you startle a little in a way that you're sure Romanoff notices even though she's got her back to both of you. Steve raises his eyebrows:  _You okay? What's going on?_ and you shake your head, make a slight dismissive gesture.  _Everything's fine. Tell you later._

There are a lot more people on the floor you're going to. That's familiar. There were always people - medical for the organic parts of you, mechanical for the arm, the men who operated the chair, sometimes Pierce or before him another man, often several armed guards. So this all seems correct. You're not worried that they're going to hurt you, because you plan on cooperating.

It gets kind of - after that, you don't really remember what happens. When you try to remember it later, it's like you're watching a movie, and the star of the movie is a guy that looks just like you, but he's not you, because you are in the audience watching. What you remember is in disjointed sense memories: they are lifting your arm, rotating it. There are hands in rubber gloves touching your jaw, turning your head from side to side. There is some discussion of an MRI which is ultimately vetoed because of your arm. There is a woman with a soft voice asking you questions.

You are good. You are cooperative. You are well-behaved. You allow yourself to be debriefed, because if you are good, cooperative, and well-behaved, they will be pleased, and there will be no need for punishment. It's almost as if there is no malice left in you with which to fight them, not now that the riddle of Steve Rogers has been solved in your mind. Wait -- you don't need to fight them. These are the good guys. The good guys. No such thing.  "The good guys".

The most noticeable difference between these rooms and the ones they used to keep you in is that these ones have windows. While the woman in the white coat with the glasses (a small recording device located in the frame above her right eye, a sedative strong enough to tranquilize a horse carefully concealed in her left sleeve) asks you questions, you look outside and see Steve. You smile a little at him and you are surprised because he - doesn't look happy. He looks almost sick. His face is drawn, his eyes hollow. But - you are good, you are cooperative, you are well-behaved. There's no reason for him to be displeased.

The car ride home - it must have been a car ride; Stark Tower is not conveniently located to a subway station - is a black hole in your memory. Emptiness.

When you get home, Steve sits down at the kitchen island heavily, like a poorly-built building collapsing under its own weight. You sit down next to him silently, and eventually he turns to you and puts his arms around you and curls into you with his face against your chest, head tucked under your chin. He used to be smaller. Sometimes he still acts like he is.

You don't know what to do. You don't know what went wrong. You touch his back with your right hand until he finally pulls away, goes to his room, closes the door.

Later you look at yourself in the mirror and see only emptiness reflected back in your own eyes, and you think, _I'm sorry. I'm sorry they turned me inside out and scrubbed me until there was nothing left._

You think it, but you don't know how you'd ever make Steve understand.

++

The next day you are mostly back to normal. Maybe the two of you are quieter than usual. Steve's phone buzzes halfway through the day and he looks at it and sighs. "They recommended extensive psychiatric counseling," he says. "Natasha says that legal is still sorting through the -- your -- that legal will get back to us. But they cleared you."

You run a hand through your hair. "They cleared me?"

"I guess they decided that you don't -- appear to be a threat to yourself, me, or the United States." The unspoken 'for the time being' hangs in the air unsaid. Not Steve's words, but certainly Natasha's implication. He looks up at you. He needs to trim his beard; it's kind of unsettling to see him with ragged edges, because his whole person usually seems to be made up of streamlined perfection. Even when he was small and sharp, he always had that corn-gold hair and the bluest eyes you'd ever seen, and now he represents a sort of peak of physicality, almost godly, that looks awkward when it's been slightly marred.

You shift a little, dragging your toes against the floor, throwing your arm over the back of the couch. "I'm not going to counseling," you say.

"I didn't think you would want to." Steve purses his lips, tapping out a message in response. "I wouldn't."

You huff and the corner of your mouth twitches up for a moment. "Course you wouldn't." You wonder what kind of psychiatrist Tony Stark - or whoever - thinks he has that would be remotely prepared to deal with seventy-odd years baggage. The kind of baggage that would have killed someone who hadn't had a knock-off supersoldier serum pumped into him over and over again. It used to burn, christ. It used to burn.

"If -- if you need to talk," Steve says. He rubs a hand over his chin.

"I already lived it once," you answer, looking up at him, meeting his eyes. He nods, his mouth in a firm line. It's kind of him to offer, though. Steve'd probably be the only one likely to understand any of it at all, because he's the only person alive who knew you - really knew you - before Hydra got to you. But you don't know that you'd want to put any of that on him. Bad enough he's seen your file; he carries all the things they did to you like physical wounds, and you don't want to hurt him anymore. He's had enough of that.

There's a long silence. Steve shuffles through some of the piles of paper spread out on the coffee table. He picks up a photograph, turns it to face you. "This was you?" he says. It's not really a question; he's gotten good at recognizing the ones you did. There's a sort of brutal efficiency. A job well done. Not that they ever said that. Hydra wasn't big on positive reinforcement.

You nod, taking it back from him and turning it face down on the table. Once upon a time, somebody was proud of that one. They used that one to show you off; it takes a certain kind of man to find beauty in an asset laid so bare that 'ruthless' isn't really a word to describe it, because 'ruthless' implies there's some kind of -- moral objection in the first place. Always talking about you. Never to you. Nobody there to talk to.

Steve just stands beside you for a while, and then he sits down on the couch too and starts sorting through the images with you. He picks up the system of your timeline pretty well. Some time passes, maybe hours, and eventually he leans back and says, looking at the ceiling, "How many more do you think there are? That S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't know about?"

You run your tongue across your teeth and shrug slowly. "Mostly working off incidences where I can remember being awake and then -- not," you say. "Doesn't mean there couldn't be more that I can't remember because they wiped me after." You look at him. "I don't remember the bridge. I know it happened, I've seen the footage, but I don't remember it."

His mouth twists. He reaches out and touches your face, and then your hair, stroking his fingers through it. "Christ," you say, your stomach cramping at how miserable he looks. "Christ, Steve, you know I don't mean to put this on you."

"I know," he says. The shadow of his long, dark eyelashes against his cheeks, and then the brightness of his eyes as he looks up at you again. His hand moving steadily in your hair, carding through, cupping the base of your skull. "I know. It's okay, though. It's worth it."


	5. corona radiata

  1. _corona radiata_



At least you can tell the dreams from reality fairly easily. The past and present aren't as intermingled as they were at first, and are easier to categorize, especially now that the timeline is really coming along. There are some gaps in it that you can't quite account for; time in the Balkans they must have spent training you. Some time you are pretty sure you were on ice for a year or more. The time when they made the transfer, brought you over to the U.S., which took some adjustment. 

This is before that. In this dream you are kneeling silently, your hands cuffed behind you because you sometimes become unpredictable. "He was successful with the woman," says the lead technician. 

You can't remember his name, you never can. They burned that out of you hard. That and his face; you can see other details clearly, the veins in his hands and his short, well-manicured nails. The expensive watch on his left wrist.  He continues, "It seems it would be profitable to prepare him for all eventualities." 

You are focused on the tech's shirtsleeves where they peek out from beneath his white coat. He turns your head, shines light in your eyes, opens your mouth with the pressure of his fingers at the hinge of your jaw and shines light in there too. "For the good of the organization, you understand," he says, stepping back and herding a young man gently forward. 

The young man looks back at him. "You are not to damage the asset," says the man in the white coat. "Do you understand?" and the young man nods, but slowly. Uncertain. 

He is less uncertain with other things. You bite him, a hot spray inside your mouth, red red red when you spit. He is screaming, and you sit back on your haunches. 

Punishment.

Another man. "For the good of the organization, you understand," says the man in the white coat. This man is - blonde. Small. Blue eyes. You judder back a little from him. The man in the white coat looks at you. Disappointed. There will be more punishment. You get back up onto your knees and duck your chin.

The young man steps forward. The young man --

You get up and go to the bathroom and stand there kicking your foot against the corner of the sink stand until the memory fades away. It's early morning. Sun not up yet. You look at yourself in the mirror. You could stand a shower. 

You spend a while in there, looking down at yourself, running your fingers through your hair over and over, slowly working out the tangles. You can't remember it ever being this tangled before the war, but it was never this long before the war either. Who let it get this long? They didn't care. Why would they? Didn't affect your performance. 

When you get out of the shower, you look at yourself in the mirror again, wiping away the fog to see more clearly. You could use a shave. Steve uses the new kind of razors, blades encased in plastic; it's easier that way, but you miss the precision of a straight razor. Maybe you'll ask him if he can get you one. Maybe you can get one for yourself now. 

When you come out of the bathroom (you didn't bother to put your clothes back on) Steve is standing there, looking sleep-tousled and worried at first, and then a bit pink around the edges. "You okay?" he asks you. You put the towel around your waist to save him the pinkness, and nod.

"You look nice," he says. "With -- you shaved, I mean." He means that you look more like the Bucky he's used to knowing. You get it. You smile at him. You're glad that at least the body you are living inside makes him happy. Makes somebody happy.

"I'm fine," you say. "Go back to bed. Maybe I'll make breakfast today."

He retreats reluctantly, and you put your -- Steve's -- pajamas back on and sit on the couch for a while, looking at your timeline spread out on the coffee table, while your hair dries. Your skin gets cold, losing the heat of the shower gradually and goosepimpling in the morning air. 1979. That must have been 1979. It fits in the timeline perfectly.

Steve gets up for the morning a couple of hours later at his usual time. You smile at him again when he comes out of his room just to see him smile back (pleased. Obedient, well-behaved. No punishment). You grind some beans and put on a pot to boil and get out the skillet, eggs, all the other ingredients. This is not something you remember, necessarily, but rather something you have learned by watching Steve do it often enough that you can mimic him perfectly.

"I was thinking," you say eventually. "Is there a gym around here?" You are tempted to add an explanation - don't want to get out of shape, starting to feel a little wired, something flippant. But you don't. 

Steve nods, his eyes flickering from your hands, as you move the eggs around the skillet with the spatula, back up to your face. "There's a place I used to go," he says. "The owner knew I liked some privacy."

"Probably a good idea." The corner of your mouth hitches up mostly against your will, imagining people rubbernecking to get a glimpse at a supersoldier beating the shit out of an inanimate object - or, well, a supersoldier trying not to beat the shit out of another person. If Steve ever sparred with other people. Not a lot of folks around could be any kind of match for him.

You could. You will. You shovel the eggs and sausage onto a plate and push it over, across the counter. You pour him a mug of coffee and bend over to hand it to him, your hair falling across your cheek. He reaches out and you stop what you are doing; his hand goes into your hair - there's a little bit more curl to it after the shower, and it's soft where it brushes against your face. You wonder what it must feel like to him.

He tucks your hair carefully behind your ear. He has this determined look on his face. His thumb strokes your smooth cheek, along your zygomatic arch. "I thought I wouldn't like this," he says "Your hair being long, I mean. I didn't think I'd get used to it. But I do. It suits you somehow."

It suits the you you are now, he means. It would have looked bizarre on the James Barnes he used to know, but on this new one, it makes sense. You don't care about the particulars. You let him touch you. You don't pull away until he removes his hand. "Thanks," he says. "For breakfast. We'll go to the gym after?"

"If you think you can handle me," you answer jokingly, making a plate of food for yourself and sitting close enough to him that you can steal sips from his mug of coffee rather than making your own, even though there's a whole pot of it.

++ 

The place is dark when you get there, with a sign on the door that is flipped to closed and windows that look like they could use a good cleaning. When Steve tries the key he was given, it works, and so does the security code he taps into the pad just inside. He looks a little bit surprised, but you aren't, not really - it seems like a pretty safe bet in your book, to trust Captain America.

Steve leaves the sign flipped over and goes to turn on all the lights, revealing a gym that looks dusty and underused but perfectly serviceable. He gives one of the bags a tap that looks almost friendly as he walks by, sending off a cloud of motes that swirl in the rays of sun filtering in. "Let's get it cleaned up a little bit before we start," he says. Of course he knows just where the supply closet is. 

Between the two of you, it doesn't take long to wipe off the layer of superficial grit on everything, and under the rust of disuse is just what you thought - a gym that is perfectly serviceable. A little old-fashioned, which makes complete sense, considering who's about to use it. Steve sits on a bench and wraps his hands slowly and methodically, pausing only to look up at you. "You're sure about this?" he asks. "We could just use the bags, you know."

You shake your head. "I'm sure," you say. You're not sure - you're sure of very little - but it feels like something you ought to do. You need to wash the rest of the taste of that memory out of your mind, and Steve needs to stay in practice even if he's not on active duty right now. Nobody better to make sure he's prepared than you.

You wrap your right hand too and the two of you go out into the center of the room, matching each other stride for stride. "I need you to tell me one more time that you're sure about this," Steve says, hands by his sides. His face is serious as the grave, almost comically so.

"You afraid you can't handle me?" you ask. The quip feels unbearably artificial the second it comes out of your mouth. He has every reason to be afraid he can't handle you. You put three bullets in him and let him fall into the damn Potomac last time the two of you fought. Besides, the Winter Soldier isn't one for trash-talking. Silence is better. More intimidating. You give him one more nod, put your left hand up, flex the fingers, beckoning. Come hither.

Steve's stance is light, for such a big guy - forward on the balls of his feet, both hands up, moving almost immediately. Some veil drops away from your eyes and you see him very clearly; the two of you start to circle, him agile and quick, every movement screaming preparedness. Your hands are by your sides. You walk deliberately, on the flat of your feet, watching him, like a wolf circling its prey.

He makes the first move, feinting for your jaw and then going for a punch to the gut, and your block is automatic. God, it feels so good. You know just what to do with your body. All of the movements are there without you even having to think about them. Punch, kick, block, duck, roll. It's something like going away like you did in the tower, and yet not at all. It's just that your body is so astonishingly present, and your mind is so astonishingly blank except for the narrative of what your body is doing and what Steve's body is going to do next.

It goes on for a long time. Steve waves you off for a moment so he can grab his water bottle. He throws yours to you too, and you catch it. You realize you are grinning widely, a feral expression, but Steve looks like he's on the verge of laughter too. He is bright-eyed and very sweaty. Maybe this feels as good for him, too. Maybe.

When he's done with his water, uncharacteristically unconcerned, he tosses the bottle aside. It clinks against the wall, and he makes a come-on motion to you with both of his hands. You've had enough time fighting him now, enough opportunities to analyze his style, strengths, weaknesses, that you know you need to take him to ground in order to subdue him.

He makes a minor mistake - he still favors your left side as your weak side, which it is not any longer - and you take him out at the knees; when he crumples you get a leg around his neck and you wrestle him down to -- the bed? -- the ground.

You get him pinned to the floor, your legs bracketing his arms, your metal elbow in the center of his spine and your human hand holding the back of his head. You could kill him from this angle, easy. Necks aren't hard to snap, not even supersoldier necks. You squeeze and feel him panting underneath you, and you could -- could --

You let him go the second he taps out, his fingers against your ankle. Your feet feel sweaty against the floor when you right yourself, backing off quickly to let him know you're no longer a threat. He just lies there, silent, face-down, and you remember and think to yourself -- _oh god_ , and you reach for his shoulder as he starts to turn himself over.

His face is bright pink, a flush that spreads down into his sweaty shirt collar, probably further. At first you think, exertion, but the look on his face is more embarrassment and he shouldn't be embarrassed about a good fight no matter who came out on top. Except -- except. He starts to pull back, scooting on his ass across the floor and trying to pull his t-shirt down as if there's enough fabric there to hide himself. "Steve," you say, when you find your voice. "Steve, wait." 

He pauses, and you take the opportunity to grab him by his ankle and yank him back toward yourself, swarming on top of him. You lean down to kiss him and he leans up to kiss you in exactly the same moment, and it's a zero-sum game in the end, who's kissing who here. It's not like the other kisses, which were gentle, sweet, contemplative. This is wild - his tongue is in your mouth and his hand is in your hair, pulling, and your hand is under his t-shirt, touching the sweaty skin of his stomach. 

He wraps his legs around you and holds you there, and your other hand moves to his thigh, sliding up under the material of his gym shorts. He pulls away, pants out a breath, kisses you again. His eyes are squeezed shut. The dark sweep of his eyelashes against his pink, pink cheeks. You close your eyes too. You make a noise, he echoes it. It feels -- it feels good.

You pull away, yank your own t-shirt off over your head. He just stares at you for a moment, then reaches up to run his hand down your chest and stomach. He stops at the waistband of your sweatpants. You go for the hem of his shorts, starting to inch them down. "Tell me to stop," you say, hoping he'll know what you mean. Tell me to stop if you don't want this. Don't let me hurt you again. He just stares at you, his fingers frozen where they rest just below your navel. "Tell me to stop," you repeat.

He shakes his head. "Don't stop," he says. "Don't stop." He pushes himself up on one hand and kisses you again while you pull his shorts and underwear the rest of the way off, his hand undoing the knot on your sweats and working them over your hips, slowly, a little clumsily. Not a lot of practice there, clearly. 

He has to momentarily disentangle himself from you to kick his shorts from around his ankles, and when he rolls onto his back again he's staring up at you wide-eyed, and you are momentarily at a loss. Your heart is hammering, and you can't catch your breath. It's like panic, but not - but it is a kind of panic, a frenzy. You are not under control. How disappointing. You need to -- you need to -- 

\-- you need to kiss him again, and you do. He puts his hands back in your hair, his arms wrapped around you, and when he takes one hand away he slides it down between you. Someone makes a noise of pleasure when his hand wraps around your cock, and you realize with some surprise that it was him, not you. He strokes you and your eyes roll back a little bit. Nothing has ever felt this good, has it? You know distantly that somebody else -- there were women, before the war -- touched you with the intent of giving you pleasure, but that memory is so far away that it feels unreal, especially compared to this. Steve. _Steve._

You're saying his name, and every time you say it, his dick jerks against your belly, where it's rubbing a sticky trail. He doesn't say your name in return, but he's still making noises, these little weird, breathless noises that are completely unknown in the realm of the Steve Rogers you know, but that send insane thrills shooting through you from your stomach to your cock every time he makes one. It's like a feedback loop that multiplies in intensity, the two of you getting off on each other. 

It doesn't last nearly long enough. Your orgasm feels like being sucker-punched; you don't make a noise, just bite your lip so hard you're sure you left teeth marks, Steve's open mouth slightly offset as he pants against your cheek. He comes too a few seconds later, a hot wet spurt -- not red, not red -- up your stomach. Your arms go weak and once he's pulled his hand free, you lie down on top of him, matching your breathing to his almost instinctually.

He doesn't move for a little while, which starts to make you nervous, and then eventually he puts his hand on the small of your back, his thumb stroking against your spine. _Okay_ , you think. Okay. 

When your heart rate has returned to a state somewhat closer to equilibrium, you get up off him and offer him a hand, which he takes. He sucks his lower lip and looks around himself at the state of the recently-defiled floor, which has a little bit of semen on it in addition to two supersoldiers' worth of sweat, and then gives you a rueful glance, picks up his underwear and shorts, and heads for the supply closet again.

You watch him as you help him clean up. _Did I win?_ you wonder, and, _Is this okay? Is this something I am allowed to have?_

He didn't tell you to stop. You told him to tell you to stop, and he told you not to stop. You clear your throat, and he looks at you, his face still somewhat red, his hair sticking up in disarray (his hair, jesus -- yours must look incredible). His expression is questioning. "Nothing," you say, tossing him the spray bottle you're holding. He catches it neatly. "Nothing, don't worry about it."

He shakes his head and tosses your sweats over. "Put those on before I start using them to clean up," he says. You laugh; you remember that you can laugh. 

++

You wait until you've been home a couple of hours - Steve is making sandwiches, his hair still a little damp from the shower - to say what you had been thinking in the gym. "Can I ask you something?" you say, letting your hair curtain your face.

He glances at you, surprised. "Of course, Buck," he says. "What is it?"

"We never did that before," you start, looking at your hand, the countertop, the wall, "before the war, did we?" Admitting that you don't know feels like admitting defeat, in a way. Maybe mostly because you know Steve doesn't want to think about the holes that still exist in your memory.

"No," says Steve cautiously, holding his sandwich in the air as if he was halfway through a gesture and then just stopped dead. He puts it back down after a moment. "We never did."

You glance at him and find with relief that he isn't looking at you, either; he's just looking at his sandwich. "Not just -- before the war, I mean, but during the war, too, I guess," you clarify, shaking your head and pushing your hair back. "I didn't think so." 

Steve turns to face you and licks his lips, frowns, as if he wants to say something, but then doesn't. He picks up the plates with the sandwiches again and hands yours to you. He eats half his sandwich and then sets it down before he speaks again. "You know you can always ask me whatever you want," he says.

"I know," you say. You doggedly pick up your own sandwich and take a bite. Your mind strays to the fact that you have taken two showers in one day; inefficient planning. "I just don't want to have to ask." 

++ 

Natasha Romanoff comes by the apartment. She knocks on the door, which is more polite than you probably would have given her credit for, and Steve lets her inside; she walks into the space like she owns it, boot heels clicking on the floor, eyes taking in everything. She comes toward you.

"Hey guys," she says. "Just wondering what you've been up to all this time in your secret hideaway for old people. Inquiring minds want to know." She casually flips the file on the coffee table open and her eyes go cold and hard in a way that even she can't control; disgust. You know that expression pretty well.

You reach out and close the file again, putting the first two fingers of your left hand against it to hold it shut. She's seen it before anyway, its less complete version, the one she gave to Steve. "Funny," you say. "I don't have a lot of secrets left, and the ones I have aren't the cute kind."

"Yeah," she answers, looking at you. "I know something about that."

 _So what,_ you think. So she does, or thinks she does. This doesn't belong to her. "Somehow I doubt this is just a social visit," Steve says, coming to stand behind her, visible over her right shoulder with his arms folded. Natasha takes her hand off your file.

"Listen, I know I took a step back in terms of trustworthiness by being the one who told you to bring him in," she says, turning to face him, though you don't make the mistake for a second of believing that she's giving you her back. "And I know you think I'm under Stark's thumb now that I'm not under Fury's." She shrugs. "I think by now you know me a little better than that. I hope so, anyway."

You don't say anything, and neither does Steve. Natasha turns back around, gazing out the windows behind the couch. "I guess if you're planning on staying holed up in an apartment in Brooklyn like a couple of hermits, you picked a nice apartment," she adds. "Good light."

"He has good taste," you say, putting your bare feet up on the table.

"I appreciate you checking in on us," says Steve, "and you know I appreciate what you did for me -- for us -- in D.C., and it's good to see you." She gets a wry sort of look on her face, and Steve just gives a small shake of his head and continues on. "But I really don't think it's just a social visit."

Her face is empty, expressionless, but you see the minute change in her eyes. "The Avengers aren't much of a team without a leader," she replies. "And like it or not, that's you. I just wanted to say that it doesn't mean you have to come alone." She looks at you pointedly. 

You raise an eyebrow at her, tapping your metal fingers on the table. She gives off this uncomfortable sense that she knows a lot about you that you don't know yourself, and while it's possible that was once true, there is little possibility that it could be anymore. "Sam's thinking about transferring to the V.A. up here," she adds almost flippantly (Sam Wilson, Falcon). Steve snorts. 

"You're normally a lot more subtle than that," he says.

"Yeah, well," says Natasha - she's still looking at you, and she looks a little sad now. "It's easier to be subtle when it's not something you actually care about."

Steve blows out a breath and shifts, coming over to sit down on the couch next to you. "Why now?" he asks. "Some kind of alien invasion that I missed?"

"No." Natasha sits down on the edge of the coffee table, carefully not dislodging any of the papers there. "But even if S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone and Pierce is dead, it doesn't mean that there aren't still active Hydra cells. Hydra is still out there; A.I.M. is still out there." She barks out a laugh. "There's still a whole galaxy out there full of aliens waiting to kill us, as far as we know. We've been investigating a pattern of energy signatures in northern Africa."

Steve's expression has changed. He looks a little guilty now and you think that's almost funny, considering if anybody deserves some goddamn R&R, it's him, but you also know that once that stubborn sense of duty has gotten into him, to try and take it away would be like trying to take a bone from a dog. He looks at you, and you shrug.

"Look, I understand your reluctance," Natasha says. "But I do know you, and I know that you have to be about as tired of sitting here on your ass as I am of working with the Avengers without anybody to act as a buffer between Tony Stark and the rest of the world."

Steve huffs, sounding simultaneously amused and indignant. "Steve, I'm fine with it," you say, because you need to be fine with it; he needs you to be fine with it. You flex your left arm. "What's the point of having all this if we're not using it, right?"

Natasha shoots you a glance that is surprised and a bit grateful, though she still looks guarded. "Hell, I'm fine with you doing it without me if that's what it takes," you start, and Steve says, "No, Buck. No more of that. We're a team," and another microexpression flits across Natasha's face but it's too quick for you to really read it.

"Bruce and Tony have been working on the thing in Africa for a while now," she says. "I've been working on Hydra but I'm starting to reach a dead end." Hence why she's back in New York, you think. "Anytime the two of you want to stop by the tower and catch up -- your biometrics are in the system."

It makes you queasy to think that they have your biometrics at all -- you wonder with a sick sense of amusement whether they took impressions from both of your hands, or just the right one -- and Natasha gets up to leave. Steve steps outside the door with her and closes it and the two of them stand out there talking. About you, mostly. You can hear enough of it that you don't have to guess that, and it wouldn't be a hard thing to guess even if you couldn't.

Steve stands with his back to the door for a minute after he comes back in, leaning against it. He looks tired. "She wanted me to tell you," he says, "that the two of you have more in common than you might think. I think she just wants to help."

 _Of course she did,_ you think. _Of course she does_. 

++ 

You wake up from a dream where they are holding you down, but carefully, about a dozen of them, and someone is saying, stern, "Gently! If you damage the asset, leadership will be very displeased!" and then -- and then

\-- there's a woman standing outside the holding room where they've put you. She's beautiful but it wouldn't matter anyway. You're not looking at her. You're looking at a blank wall. "He needs to learn," says the man standing next to her. "How to behave with a woman. It's essential for his functionality." She is looking between you and him, a hard look on her face, and adjusting the hemline of her dress. "You're going to teach him," the man says, and you wonder, did they really take that away from me too?

She's smiling at you with her painted mouth as she enters, and she doesn't know you could hear them through the glass. Something goes _zing_ with recognition inside of you at the way she's walking toward you, and you --

You wake up on the couch. You must have dozed off. Stupid position, highly indefensible. The bedroom is much better. Steve is sitting at the kitchen island, watching you curiously, drinking a cup of coffee.

You sit up with a groan, stretching. "Bad place to fall asleep," you say, shuffling all the papers neatly back into the file. It's -- almost done. The holes that remain are total voids in your memory. "We going into Manhattan today?"

"If you're up for it," Steve says. "I know what Natasha said, but --"

"I'm up for it," you answer. "She was right." You get up and go into the kitchen, pouring yourself a mug of coffee and sitting next to him. You always sit pretty close now. Close enough that your shoulders almost brush.

Steve looks at you, resting his chin on his shoulder. He puts his mug down and turns on his chair, leaning into your space and pressing his mouth against yours. You open your legs and turn your shoulders toward him, to give him better access, and he comes closer still, till his arms are holding onto either side of your stool, bracketing your legs. He sucks on your lower lip and it sends a hot shiver through you, and you put your hand on his face, opening your mouth for him and letting him kiss you until neither of you can breathe.

He rests his forehead against yours and doesn't say anything at all. These are the things that they always got wrong. That woman, she wouldn't have --

He reaches for your other hand and tangles your fingers up together like a little knot of infinity, the space between your hands like a fractal fold that goes on and on. You think, no, this isn't new. Maybe the other thing was, but this stupid kid making you feel like a fool, that's not new. If it took seventy years to get here, to have this, instead of just wanting it, maybe that's the thing that's supposed to make it all worth it.

"On a scale of one to ten," you say, "How much do you think I need to be afraid that Stark's gonna cream himself over my arm?"

"Eleven," says Steve. You feel his smile against your face.

"In that case," you shift a little, pulling back to look him in the eye, "Do you think we can stop so I can get some shoes? Because I really think if I'm gonna deal with that, I deserve to be wearing shoes of my own, that actually fit me."

Steve laughs. "Yeah," he agrees. "I guess you're right about that." 

++ 

You get a pair of boots. Black. Steve is not surprised. You, on the other hand, are slightly surprised that you feel somewhat less uneasy with them on. You can move better than you could in Steve's shoes that didn't really fit, and the support around your ankles is -- familiar. It makes you feel good. You want to take the subway, kiss Steve on the subway, in front of all those people who don't pose a threat to you, but he insists on the car.

"Buck," he says to you urgently as the driver pulls into the underground parking garage. "If you can help it, please don't -- go away, like you did last time. I know it's a," he swallows, "a coping mechanism, but we don't need to be here if that's what it takes to be here." 

When he finishes he looks like the words have taken a lot out of him. You want to just smile and tell him it's fine, but the real truth is that you don't control it, you can't just choose to be there or not-there. Like he said: it's a coping mechanism. "I think I'll be all right," you say.

The second you get into the elevator you regret saying it, but you clench your teeth and look at your reflection in the elevator's chrome interior and force yourself to stay there, right there. Steve looks grim beside you, which perversely does something to anchor you, because it's ridiculous that a fucking elevator, of all things, should be cause for Captain America to look grim. Elevators, trains, bridges. Too bad nobody told you all those mundane objects could take on such dire significance. 

The elevator opens onto a floor full of gleaming electronics that are, at least, far too chaotic to be anything Hydra ever made. "Cap, you're back in New York," says Anthony Edward Stark, level six target, "It just breaks my heart that you didn't give me a call, we could have set up a nice little tête-à-" and then, catching sight of you, or rather, of your arm - "Who is this?" 

You put the metal hand back into your pocket. He knows exactly who you are, you're sure. He knew Steve was back in New York. He probably engineered all of this, one way or another.

"Tony," says Steve evenly from beside you, "this is Bucky. Bucky, Tony Stark." 

"Iron Man," says Stark brightly. "Maybe you've heard of me, of course you've heard of me. So this is the famous Sergeant Barnes, huh? Cap's bosom buddy. Pleasure to meet you." He doesn't reach out to shake your hand. He doesn't even really look at you. He's still peering at your metal joints where they peek out between your pocket and the sleeve of your jacket.

"This is really gonna bother you, isn't it?" you say. He has to have schematics; it was here in this very building that they examined you, and the information had to have gone right onto his server, assuming he didn't already have access to the file that Natasha gave Steve. But the look in his eyes says Stark is like a kid and you're dangling a toy he wants just out of his reach, so you strip off your jacket and your sweatshirt so he can see most of the length of your arm, reflecting the cold blue light of all the screens in the room.

Steve looks a bit drawn, beside you. You nudge him and hand him your jacket, moving to sit down so that Stark can keep examining your arm a little bit less awkwardly than he was while you were standing. "Natasha asked us to come," says Steve, still standing, walking around the room now. "She said you and Dr. Banner had been looking at some energy signatures out of northern Africa."

"Energy -- oh, yeah. JARVIS?" says Stark, and you jump only slightly when a voice answers from the ceiling, "Yes, sir? How may I be of service?" 

"You heard Cap," Stark mutters. "Bring up the wave pattern on those energy signatures we were looking at."

A complex and strangely beautiful tapestry of colored light appears on the screens around you, starting on one and continuing to another seamlessly. "Huh," you say without thinking, "Cool," and Stark says, "Hey, you think that's cool? You can stay, if you think that's cool. It _is_ pretty cool." He reaches out and touches your arm and you stay still and let him, focusing instead on the way the glowing lines intersect with each other. Postmodern art, you think. 

Steve comes over again to stand near you, and reaches out to tap the screen with his fingers, turning the pattern of lines this way and that. You watch him instead of watching Stark. "Would you mind explaining it," he says to Stark eventually, and Stark turns his head. 

He has that look, the look of a person so used to living in his own head and being the smartest man in the room that he often forgets other people aren't as smart and is vaguely irritated when he is reminded. "Yeah, yeah, okay," he says, exploding the diagram onto a larger screen. "So these are an overlay of the signatures that a tower picked up, all originating from uh, coordinates in Northern Africa - Tunisia, Algiers, Mali." He does something with his other hand and pulls up a glowing wireframe map of Africa with dots shining where the signals have come from.

"Wow, I am really not the exposition guy. I really wish Bruce was here right now. So - random intervals, we've got the time mapped out too and there's no pattern that I can find, which means, you know, there's no pattern. Big energy signatures, short duration." He turns the glowing lines sideways and they are suddenly peaks and valleys showing amplitude. "It's not Asgardian and it's not nuclear. The really interesting part is that it's got something in common with both of those, though. Oh, and it's not mine. I should say that, it's definitely not a rogue piece of Stark Tech."

"Any leads?" Steve asks, walking around the screen with his hands in his pockets.

Stark shakes his head. "We sent Rhodey out there to take a look but he couldn't find anything." He shrugs, flicking the glowing image so that it spins, and then turns around and starts looking at your arm again. "Kind of a dead end. Very kind of a dead end, for now, short of us all taking a nice, relaxing autumn vacation to Tunisia. JARVIS is monitoring the whole area so that when something else happens, we'll know. Why did Natasha send you and your loyal sidekick all the way down here just to check out a dead end? You sure like to do things the old fashioned way."

You reach for the diagram, having studied the way Tony's fingers moved it before, and collapse it down so that it's small enough to fit between your arms. You turn it over and over, plucking out one particular thread and following it. It seems familiar. "Look at that," says Stark. "Fast learner for a guy who was born at the turn of the century."

"1917," you say, chewing on the inside of your cheek and glancing back at Steve.

"Hydra?" Steve asks you.

"Yeah, we thought that too," says Stark, "but if it's Hydra it's a branch that's not connected to any of the others, 'cause the ping we sent out through that network dead-ended. Besides, there hasn't been a whole lot of Nazi activity in Northern Africa since, well, World War Two. They're busy having their own problems now. Plenty of problems, believe me."

You shrug, watching the image rotate itself slowly in your grasp. Something here is familiar, but it's something that, like the lead Hydra tech's face in your dream, they burned out of you hard. Something they didn't want you knowing, just in case. Pierce got pretty paranoid about that the past decade or so. Ah - yeah, he would need to be, you think, the image of Howard Stark's face, bloody and dazed, as he peered out the driver's side window of his car rising in your mind. Tony must know, as voraciously as he seems to consume all available knowledge, but either he's made his own peace with it or he's too distracted to acknowledge the connection.

"This is pretty good," says Stark grudgingly, finally sitting back from your arm and putting his hands on his knees. "Somebody obviously at least sort of knew what they were doing. How's the maintenance process on that?" 

"I know how to do minor functionality repairs," you answer. What could it hurt, really, to tell him? "Kind of analogous to field dressing a wound. Not necessarily how to do long-term maintenance or major repair." You pause. "I could probably tell you what they used to do."

Stark looks away from the arm for a second and meets your eyes, probably accidentally, and he looks troubled for a second or two before shaking his head. "Nah, I have the schematics. Listen, though, I don't suppose I'd be able to talk you into letting me maybe make a few upgrades to it? I could eliminate the grind in the elbow and --" 

"Tony," says Steve flatly. 

"Yeah, okay, I get it." Stark shrugs. "Whatever, you know, if you ever do need it looked at, here I am, technological genius, at your service." 

You very much doubt he's ever at anyone's service other than his own. "I could use a phone," you say, looking at Steve, who looks -- bored, hilariously, and somewhat unhappy. 

Stark makes a face. "How mundane," he says. "Okay, we can get you a phone. I have a lot of phones around here. I could give you -"

"The normal kind of phone will do fine," says Steve. You wonder if he's gonna try and have some kind of conversation with you later about you asserting your independence and how it's good for you but you have to be careful. That seems like the kind of conversation that people would have in this kind of situation, except that neither you, nor Steve, nor Tony Stark, is really a normal person at all.

++ 

Stark takes about seven minutes to "show you around" the tower with Steve, and then someone who looks administrative comes toward the three of you and he immediately remembers something else he has to do. The administrative person gets you a phone and Steve asks her about resolving the issue of your back pay. You look at him, surprised, and he says sternly, "You were a prisoner of war for a long time, Bucky, you're owed your due."

The woman says that Miss Potts is still having legal look into that and a decision hasn't been reached yet, but they're speeding the process along as much as possible, and they'll contact you (she's talking to Steve but you get the feeling she means both of you) as soon as they know anything final. "In the meantime," she says, "there is a bank account into which the monthly stipend is being deposited and I'd be happy to get you set up to access it immediately." 

"Monthly stipend?" you ask, and laugh, feeling frankly kind of indignant, because hell if it seems right to you getting paid for months of sitting around in Steve's apartment figuring out exactly how many people you killed in exactly what way. The lady isn't fazed, though; she just blinks at you from behind her glasses, tapping on the little computer tablet she carries with her, and says, "Let's set up a password right now." 

On the way back, Steve is pretty quiet, with his chin in his hand, looking out the dark tinted windows. "So I guess I can pay you back," you say eventually, leaning your head against the back of the seat and staring up at the ceiling of the car.

"You really don't need to," says Steve. "I have too much money anyway. Sometimes it makes me mad, just looking at it." 

You laugh and scrub your hand over your face. "So here we are, in the future," you say, "with too much money. Who woulda thought." 

When you get back to Steve's apartment, he seems tired, worn-down. You take a guess and come up with the fact that it might be exposure to Stark that does it to him, although it's alarming in the sense that the Steve Rogers you know comes up against a problem of any kind and typically comes away fired up and ready to take it down in whatever way he can. Except he can't take down Tony Stark, and Tony Stark isn't really a problem in the traditional sense, is he?

Maybe Natasha was right. Maybe Steve does need to get the hell out of the house. "You think that signal was Hydra?" he asks eventually, pulling a take-out menu off the fridge and studying it. 

"I don't know," you answer honestly. "Might be. Could be. The fact that it looked a little bit familiar to me doesn't say a whole hell of a lot. I've known and forgotten a lot of stuff." You lean against the island and fold your arms, waiting for him to pass you the menu. You want to ask him if he would feel better if he was on a mission, if he had something to fight against. 

"Tony's a whiz with mechanics," Steve says, handing the menu over. "If you do decide you want someone to -- look at your arm, he'd do a good job."

A minor puzzle piece clicks into place and you are half-amused to think that maybe part of the reason Steve's pissed is because Stark just put his hands on you without even asking. Not that Steve asks either, but you're -- Steve's thing, you and Steve are each other's thing, it's different. Steve probably spent most of that time somewhere between jealous and worried. What an idiot. "Yeah," you say. "I might have had enough of other people messing with it to last me for a while, though." You flex your fingers and you can feel the grind in the elbow that Stark was talking about, but it doesn't impede functionality and won't in the foreseeable future, so. "Get me the number nine, would you?" you say.

Steve calls the sandwich place and orders delivery. You start watching a movie, one on a long list of movies that was recommended to Steve by some member of the general public, to help him catch up on all the years he missed. It's -- nice. You've picked up a lot of references just from doing research, but there's a difference between reading a film synopsis and actually seeing the real thing.

You jump when the buzzer sounds from downstairs, and Steve goes to get the sandwiches. He hesitates between grabbing plates and just handing them over wrapped in butcher paper, and eventually forgoes the plates and just sits back down next to you. The timeline in its folders is still sitting on the coffee table, but the two of you just let it rest for now.

Steve is still pretty quiet, though he laughs at the appropriate points in the movie and says, "Those were good, huh?" about the sandwiches. He picks up his little notebook from the table and opens it to one of several pages filled with lists of names scrawled down, scratches one of them off. 

You take the notebook from him curiously, and he lets you. Flipping through the pages, you say, "So this seems to be a popular new pastime, telling Captain America what he missed in the past seven decades, huh?" 

You look at him and he smiles wryly and nods. "They're just trying to be helpful. I did miss a lot." 

_Me too, pal_ , you think. "Must get fucking annoying sometimes, though." You find one title in the earlier pages that's definitely porn, and close the notebook, setting it back on the table. 

Steve shrugs. "It's not as bad as some of the other stuff people ask." 

You raise your eyebrows. "Like what?" 

He snorts. "I get asked kind of a lot if I've -- you know. Had...any romantic entanglements, since the 1940s." 

You laugh, because you can't help yourself. "People ask you if you've gotten laid?" 

Steve nods. He looks a little bit embarrassed and you can just imagine him responding to that question from a complete stranger. He'd try to be polite but he'd get slightly irritated too, because none of that is any of their business. "Yeah," he says. "I mean, I'm a public figure, curiosity is normal, I get it. But -- I was frozen for years and years, I woke up and everything was different, and since then, I've been pretty busy. The way things go it's kind of been one crisis after another. I haven't exactly had a lot of time for...dating." 

You chuckle, balling up the butcher paper that the sandwiches were wrapped in and tossing it into the trash can across the room. "You know what I'm talking about, right?" Steve says. "It'd be like me asking you if you'd-- had any romantic entanglements since the 1940s." 

"I wouldn't exactly call them romantic entanglements," you say before you can help yourself. Steve looks at you, and his eyes get almost comically big and most of the color goes out of his face. 

"What?" he says.

Oh, jesus, here you go, you think. Down the rabbit hole.

"They needed me to be able to...do things," you say. "Missions weren't always just cut and dry."

Steve turns toward you more fully. His expression has rapidly gone from shocked to shocked and infuriated. "Please tell me you're not implying what I think you're implying." 

You avert your eyes and shrug. You want to make some kind of excuse, you want to say it wasn't that bad compared to some of the other stuff, because it wasn't, but to say that means you're going to have to reveal what the other stuff was in the first place. 

Steve gets up abruptly, running a hand over his face. He paces back and forth across the living room, going from windows to couch and windows again.  You watch the tension build and build in his shoulders, like a wave that's just about to break. "Steve," you say, and his expression when he looks over at you is thunderous. 

You realize you don't really know what you were going to say anyway. Were you going to tell him about that mission? That you had to get her alone, and she was only ever alone when she was in her bedroom? Somebody had said to you before they sent you off, mockingly, "It'll give you a chance to brush up. I hear you used to be quite the ladies' man," and you'd had no idea at all what that meant. You only had what they'd taught you.

Were you going to tell him, they didn't hurt me, they just gently forced me to do things I didn't want to do. Pain was never associated with the physical act - just the threat of it, if you didn't comply. Were you going to tell him there are probably vaults and vaults of your bodily fluids out there, carefully extracted from you in case your modified genetic material could be used to create more like you in the future? 

Of course not. You can't tell him any of this. This is the stuff so bleak they left it out of your file entirely. Well, the version of it Natasha had, anyway. Somewhere the information still lives out there, like a ghost, and eventually you're sure it will find you again. Bad pennies always turn up. 

Somehow he reads something anyway in your face - your treacherous fucking face; sometimes you miss being a blank slate - and his hands clench into fists, his mouth twisting. You go over the back of the couch in just enough time to catch his right hook in your left fist before it splinters the wall instead. "Come on, Rogers, I thought egregious property damage was more my style," you say helplessly.

"You're joking?" Steve asks you, furious, red-faced. "You just told me - and now you're joking? Bucky, this is - there's fucked up and then there's this!" His fist grinds against your hand; he's still pressing against it. Although the motion has stopped, all the force behind it is still there.

You laugh. "Yeah, I know that," you say. "I know that, pal, I lived it."

"How can you even --" Steve drops his hand abruptly and returns to pacing, head down. He looks at you again over his shoulder when he's a few feet away. "How could you even let me touch you?" he asks, and you can see in his head that he's thinking maybe you were just doing what you did as part of some trained response, which -- fuck no, that's enough to almost make you angry too.

"I can let you touch me because I'm not a thing anymore," you say. Your voice is flat, cold. "I get to make those decisions for myself now. Unless you wanna take that away from me, too. It might be easier."

Steve's shoulders jerk up just about to his ears. He turns around to face you and you think from his facial expression that you're about to get socked in the mouth. You really got him with that one - Steve Rogers, who never chose the easy way if it didn't intersect with the right way, and it's pretty rare that those two things cross paths.

Instead he seizes your shoulders tight enough to bruise (maybe tight enough to really hurt someone who's more breakable than you) and crushes his mouth against yours, slamming you back against the wall. So much for keeping the apartment in one piece. "Don't you say that," he hisses when he pulls back. "I would never."

 _I know_ , you think, and isn't that a big fat pie piece of why you're here; he'd never. He kisses you again and you let him hold you up against the wall, putting your legs around his waist and your arms around his shoulders. Whatever ideas you had about him in the 1930s, this wasn't one of them; being pinned against a wall and supported by the hot bulk of him is so far beyond the realm of fantasy for the guy you grew up with, but here you are, none of you the same as you used to be. 

And it makes you hot, hot as hell, like you've got a live wire in your gut burning and burning, to replace all the seventy years of ice that lives inside you now. Steve gasps against your mouth, his hands holding you up squeezing your thighs, your ass. You pull on his t-shirt and he lets you go for a second so he can pull it off; you run your hands over his shoulders, his arms, and surge away from the wall so you can get your own off too. They end up tangled up on the floor together, black and white, isn't that a picture, isn't that a symbol if you ever saw it.

He stares at you, panting and flushed, and you push him, hard, hard enough that he stumbles, back toward the bedroom. He looks over his shoulder, like he's confirming where you want him to go, and then he grabs you again and the two of you are stumbling together, connected at the mouth, his hands on your ass, your hands in his hair. 

There's a second when you step inside the bedroom and his bed is fraught with too many possibilities, but he shoves you down onto it, and you go down, on your back, looking up at him as he undoes his pants, kicks them off to the side, and reaches for your belt. He yanks it out so roughly that it lifts your hips up a little bit and you feel dizzy, blurry with arousal, in a strange way you can't remember feeling before. 

It's not any less frantic than what you did in the gym the other day, but it feels undeniably more intimate, almost uncomfortable, being laid bare before him. You don't have anywhere to hide now, even if you wanted to. No cover of darkness to escape into. Steve looks hungry, like he's never seen anything as good as you, and you wonder how the hell that could be true when you've never seen anything as good as him either. 

He kicks his own pants off and crawls up the bed, bracing himself over you and leaning down to kiss your mouth, your neck. He pins your left hand to the mattress and you pull on the hair at the nape of his neck with your right until he bites your shoulder right there, right where skin meets metal. You barely recognize the noise that comes out of your mouth, a low liquid sound as shivery and fucked-up as you feel. You don't want him to stop touching you. You never want him to stop touching you.

His hips grind against yours, the hot line of his cock through his underwear -- "Take those the fuck off," you manage to gasp out, your left hand straining against his almost like it's forgotten it could break his grip if it wanted to. He shucks them off and looks at you with wild eyes, and you say, "Fuck me, jesus, Steve, I want you to fuck me," and the look on his face is like nothing you've ever seen before, and you really regret that. You regret that you've never seen this look before, because if anybody deserves to be given everything he wants it's Steve Rogers, and god help you but you're gonna do your best to play your part in that.

For a second you're worried he won't know what to do, but then he lets go of your left arm, his hand sliding downward, his other hand reaching for the bedside table. For a second when your mind goes totally blank at the snick of a cap opening, you're worried you won't know what to do either, outside the reliable context of situations where you weren't supposed to want anything, but then he has one hand wrapped around your dick and one finger of the other is pressing inside you and you aren't worried anymore, you're just asking him please please please, and that's better than you expected. Better than you could have hoped. 

He gets two fingers in you and he's so fucking careful, until you grab his wrist, and he looks up at you with his pupils huge and black, and you say, "I'm not made of glass, Captain," and he says, removing his hands, "Do you -- should I use a condom?" and you snarl at the thought of something between you, something so unnecessary. You take advantage of his momentary lapse of concentration and flip him onto his back, and for a second he looks up at you terrified -- terrified? adoring? -- until you start to sink down on him, and then his eyes roll back and his mouth hangs open, and he says only, "oh." 

Your legs shake a little, and you have to take a second to adjust, your head hanging down, chin against your chest, hair in your face. Steve reaches up and brushes it away and you turn your head and kiss the center of his hand, right over heart and head and life line, and you start to move.

Steve's body surges out of stillness, his hands clamping onto your hips and his movements echoing yours, his hips snapping up as you roll yours down. He makes a quiet noise with every movement, just a hint louder than an exhale. It isn't long before your own panting breaths are forced into something more, too, foreign noises. They don't sound like the noises that a soldier should make. They sound like --

He pauses, and you groan in frustration, a groan that's abruptly cut off as he wraps his arms around you and flips you back over so that you're flat on the bed and he's leaning over you. "Christ, Bucky," he says, hooks one of your knees over his shoulder, and snaps his hips forward, and you sort of lose your mind.

He's got you at the right angle, the one they could never quite manage consistently, and the bedroom and the city and the world around you narrows and devolves into the sounds of skin slapping against skin, his pants and groans, and a voice you barely recognize as your own (and isn't that ironic) saying his name and asking him again, please please please, and he says to you, "Yeah, Buck, yeah,"

These were details you were never supposed to know. These moments, along with those moments much, much earlier- 

you were bivouacked near Lille outside of this little farm village, it was cold as hell and all you were thinking was how you were glad at least your shoes fit because you heard from Easy Company's medic that half of their shoes came the wrong size and they could barely walk, and you had first watch. As the moon came up Steve came back from the village and you caught his profile in the moonlight, his profile the same as it always had been, and he looked so beautiful (which you remember thinking was a stupid thing to think about a guy, but there you were) that you thought, _shit, Barnes, get real. This guy is the best thing to ever happen to you_ and you'd be following him anyway, even if it was just around alleys in Brooklyn -

\- were moments you weren't ever supposed to be able to compare to what they gave you, and as you stare up into Steve's intent eyes, you think to all those scientists, _fuck you, I win_ , and your orgasm is blinding in its intensity, almost like pain, but completely different at the same time.

Steve fucks you through it, and he squeezes his eyes shut tight when he comes inside you (the feeling surprises you, a genuinely new sensation), and when he opens them again he looks totally poleaxed, just staring down at you like he can't believe it.

He pulls out and lies down next to you, and you rest your hand on his chest to feel his heart beating as his breathing slows gradually. He keeps his eyes closed for a while, and eventually you ask him, "What was it -- what do you think it was that changed?" because you're pretty sure he felt the same way, back then, but obviously something has changed since. 

"I don't know," he says, opening his eyes and looking at the ceiling, and then at you. "I guess I'm just not scared anymore." He pauses, and then, "Everything that could happen kind of did, y'know?" 

You laugh, putting your hand over your eyes for a second. "Yeah. I know."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers being forced to perform oral sex on a young man. Later in the chaper, he also remembers being forced to engage in sex with a woman.


	6. immersion

  1. _immersion_



You wake up before he does in his bed the next morning. His breathing is soft, even - none of the rattling or wheezing you were so used to before. There were times in your life that you were absolutely stricken with the fear that Steve was going to leave you by yourself, flicker out like a snuffed candle. It seems kind of funny now that he has a heart of steel. You wonder how much longer he has to live - how much longer you both have to live. You still would rather be the one to go first, but you never wanted to leave him either, now maybe more than ever.

(Did you ever tell him you weren't a volunteer, or is he still laboring under the weight of that elaborately concocted fantasy?)

You feel okay. You feel all right. You have a few bruises on your arm and you look at them in the morning sun filtering in through the blinds. What's black and white and red all over?

He moves, turns toward you and opens his eyes. You get to watch the second that consciousness comes back to him. "Hey," he says. His voice is rough, and he sounds careful, guarded.

You just lie there with him, letting him see you, relaxed, letting him figure it out for himself. He does, quickly, and runs a hand over his face before rolling over to look at his clock blinking its green numbers into the half-dark. When he rolls back toward you, you say, "I think we could afford to skip the morning run," and he smiles.

The two of you stay where you are and just look at each other now. This Steve isn't different in any meaningful way from the Steve who populates your memories, and you feel a sense of regret that you are certainly quite different from how he must remember you. You'd give it all back to him if you could.

He sighs. "I want you know," he says after some time has passed, "I wasn't mad at you."

"I know that," you say. Even if he had been, it would have been okay. You could understand him being mad at you. Sometimes you're mad at yourself, too. Mad at your fingers for pulling the trigger. Mad that, of all the things you used to be, it was the cold inside and the steady killing hand that stayed.

He reaches out and pushes your hair back, spreading it out on the pillow and arranging strands. You want to retort that you're not a girl but it feels good having him pay attention to stupid details like that. Feels nice to be touched in a friendly way without any ulterior motives attached. "You look good," he says softly.

"Metal arm and all?" you ask, a little teasing.

"Metal arm and all," he agrees.

You think he always looked good to you. Even before he looked good to anybody else,

++

"You still draw?" you ask him later. You're at the grocery store. He'd been having them delivered this whole time, which frankly could have been partly because Steve just likes his privacy, but was definitely partly about you. He glances over his shoulder, putting a loaf of bread into your cart, surprised.

"Yeah, I guess so." He shrugs. "Now and then. Lately not as much." He holds up two more loaves of bread, studying the packages, before adding one of them. "It didn't seem like a real good time to be spending a lot of time in my own head."

He's been spending a lot of time in yours, though. But still, you get that. You imagine drawing is similar to some other skillsets you've acquired, and requires the person doing it to find a sort of peace of mind that lets them drift along until the focus narrows. "I saw your sketchbooks at the museum," you say. "You ever get those back?"

"Not yet," he answers wryly. A kid runs by the cart and you stand out of the way. "I don't mind them being there. Mostly old stuff I don't need any help remembering."

Mostly you, Peggy, the Commandos, the war. You get that too. "You ever draw any of your new teammates?" you ask. "I bet Natasha would make a nice portrait."

"She would," Steve agrees, steering the cart into the dairy aisle, where a couple of young women stare unabashedly and then immediately turn away, like they weren't being obvious about it, when Steve smiles at them. "Before what happened with S.H.I.E.L.D., I would have told you she'd hate the idea. Now, I don't know. She's a busy person."

You smirk, tossing Steve a container of butter. Even knowing what you do about the state of the economy right now, being offered this many immediately available choices about every piece of food is a little bit overwhelming. Maybe you'll get used to that too, though. Just another part of this world, where there's too much of everything. "Everybody's busy except us," you say.

Steve snorts. "I'd say we've been pretty busy," he says. "Just 'cause we haven't been saving the world doesn't mean we're not doing anything."

Just not anything likely to get noticed by anybody who isn't as embroiled in it as the two of you, you think. "You think Stark'd send those files over to me so I could take a look at 'em again?" you ask. You tap your knuckles against the side of your head. "Maybe knock something loose."

Steve looks momentarily uncertain. "I'm sure he would," he says. "I'm afraid I won't be much help, though. The stuff he and Dr. Banner talk about goes way over my head most of the time."

Steve's not a stupid guy by any stretch of the imagination, but you imagine that's true. You're pretty sure that the stuff Stark and Banner talk about would go over the heads of about ninety-five or so percent of the population, yourself included. You're just hoping that somebody from the other five percent left a clue somewhere inside your mess of a brain.

The two girls are looking at you and Steve again as Steve puts some yogurt into the cart. The kind with fruit on the bottom. You turn and stand with your back to them, pull out your phone and send a text to Stark. The message you get in response so clearly shares his speech patterns that it's obvious he verbally dictated it to his A.I., which makes you wonder if you could have bypassed the human element altogether. "He's sending it to me," you tell Steve. "Or JARVIS is. He said he wasn't sure your computer could handle his software." You pause for a second. "I think that's meant to be some kind of dirty joke, but it's really stupid."

Steve rolls his eyes a little at your quip, and then glances over your shoulder, presumably at the two young women. As you walk past them on your way to the cashier, you notice they both have their phones out. It could be nothing, really. People always have their phones out. You guess you don't care if they took pictures of Steve and the back of your head. Your hand is firmly in the pocket of your sweatshirt. Nobody's gonna see that part.

When you get home you open the file on Steve's computer, which handles it just fine, and spend a couple of hours in the space you go into when you're gathering information - that same space Steve probably gets into when he's drawing. You still can't make heads or tails of it, though; by the time it's dinner you decide to just leave it be for a while. Let it rest, maybe something will come up on its own. Your subconscious is unpredictable that way, and often prefers to unearth its dirty secrets under the cover of night.

"Tony'll probably like you better than me," Steve comments offhandedly, twirling spaghetti aimlessly on his fork. "I think you're picking up his technology a little better than I did. I guess I was never as impressed as he wanted me to be."

You shrug, spearing a meatball. Steve makes good meatballs; where he learned to cook Italian is beyond you, especially since he's fairly shitty at following rules and tends to prefer flying by the seat of his pants, or, as he would call it, "improvisation." He always got better at making dinners he'd made more than once, though. Maybe he's just made a lot of spaghetti in the years you've been apart. "Technology's just a tool, as far as I see it," you say. "Just a means to an end. What really matters is who's behind it."

"Yeah," Steve agrees, smiling with a wry twist of his mouth. "Well, Tony is a very smart guy. Maybe even smarter than Howard, although I think it'd gall Howard to hear me say it."

You think of the young man you knew, however briefly, and the older man whose tired face had changed with recognition the closer you'd gotten to the car, though you hadn't known why at the time. "Maybe," you say. "Maybe not, though. Maybe he knew it." You shake your head a little to think of a man that smart trying to raise a boy even smarter. Complicated, might be the word for it.

"I guess Howard used to tell him about me," Steve says. "He mentioned it to me, back when -- when we first met. I don't think the impression he got from Howard was exactly the right one, though."

It makes sense to you. Howard knew Steve more as Captain America than Steve Rogers, and while those are two very similar concepts, they're not exactly the same. You've seen some of the stuff written about Steve, and nobody who recounts the exploits of Captain America is particularly fond of painting him as the stubborn, disobedient cuss he is. When Captain America disobeys the rules it's heroic, bold; none of them really knew the feeling of trying to pull Steve Rogers back from another fight he couldn't afford to lose but wasn't willing to step away from. That feeling was a lot like frustration, with a side of mortal terror added in.

You doubt Howard Stark ever really mentioned you. Maybe as a footnote. "I guess I can't blame him for not being able to wrap his head around Steve Rogers," you say finally. "I've had a while to do it myself and even I don't know if I'm quite there yet."

Steve smiles at you. Maybe slightly sadly. "It hasn't really been that long for either of us, though, has it?" he asks. "You know, they all say, seventy years I spent -- asleep, but to me it was -- I lost you, and then the next day I went down in that plane, and I woke up here. It didn't feel like any time had passed at all. So now, it's been a couple of years for me, I guess, but not long enough that the wound wasn't still fresh."

It strikes you to hear him refer to it that way, as a wound. "Yeah," you agree. "I know. I know." You've tried to piece all of the time together in your mind, to figure out objectively how much time has passed for you too, but it's a bit harder. Ultimately you realized it didn't really matter, because the memories you have, while tangential to major world events, didn't tell you anything at all about the state of the world on their own. You were just a bullet, fired into the slipstream.

"Sometimes the old stuff feels more real," you say. It surprises you to hear yourself say it, but it's true, if only because the old stuff makes sense. The old stuff is a person's life, a sequence of events that fits a narrative. Your narrative, once upon a time.

"I think it was," Steve says. He smiles at you. Sad and happy at the same time. "But we're both here now, and that's -- that's good too."

++

There is a technician. A young woman; you can tell by the smoothness of her skin and the clarity of her sclera. Her eyes are a clear color. Yellow-brown. She is looking at you -- why? You cannot assess her facial expression to a satisfactory degree. The lower half of her face is covered with a surgical mask.

She is looking at your arm now. Now she is taking out a small machine. She is turning your arm this way and that, blowing dust and grit out of the joints. She is slow and careful. She is very thorough. The last technician was not as thorough. She is cleaning your arm meticulously using an oil-based lubricant. Things she cleans from your arm: Blood. Ash. Sand.

You are sitting still. You are cooperative. She is finished with your left arm, and she looks at your right. Your right arm does not require maintenance, but she is touching your right arm. She is taking your right hand and turning it over in her hands. She is not wearing gloves, because she was only meant to touch your left arm, you think. You are reasonably certain. She gets out other tools, which are similar to tools that would be used for punishment, except - you are cooperative. There is no need for punishment.

She is not punishing you. She is cleaning your right hand. She is scraping blood and ash and sand out from under your fingernails. There's no pain. She is cutting the fingernails down shorter. She is reaching for something -- some kind of cream -- and rubbing it on your hand. She is sanitizing several small cuts which will heal shortly anyway, which do not need to be sanitized. Her hands are much smaller than yours, you notice.

She moves her chair up further, next to your head, and touches a spot on your cheek where there is a sore, from the mask, which will not heal. She sanitizes this area too, and then applies more of the cream there. You are not looking at her, but when you do look at her, you see that she is looking at you, too. She is frowning. This is an expression you have come to associate with punishment, but there is no punishment.

She gets out a pair of scissors, and you feel vaguely relieved that now she is going to punish you. Instead she touches your head and cuts something just out of your field of vision. You see it fall and look at the floor. Hair. Your hair.

When she leaves, the other men come in. Everything goes black.

You wake up. A sound of music. You follow the music. A gun in your hand. A young woman. The music swells; she looks at you. Clear eyes. Yellow-brown. Sclera red due to irritation, tears down her face. There are always tears when they know you are coming. "We must never forget that the asset is a weapon," says a man's voice from behind you, stern.

You shoot. She falls down. We all fall down.

Steve's next to you, warm in his t-shirt and underwear. He shifts and mutters something, and you stare up at the ceiling. You swallow several times. You wish you hadn't remembered that. You turn to Steve and say, "Steve," and he opens his eyes and says, still half-asleep, "Yeah, Buck?" and then looks a little bit surprised and confused when he realizes that's the right response. Sometimes he forgets you're with him again.

"Nothing," you say, and then, "I had a dream."

He sighs, shifting, putting his arms around you, stroking at your hair with sleep-heavy hands. "You want to talk about it?"

It's three-fifteen in the morning. "No," you say. "No."

"Okay," he murmurs, his breath against your neck. He's falling back asleep already. You wonder what he dreams about, if he dreams about anything at all.

++

You're feeling pretty worn thin by that afternoon when Steve gets a message from Natasha (Natasha always includes smiley faces in her messages, which you find highly ironic for a woman of her reputation) that says Sam Wilson is at Stark Tower. "We could go and say hi," he says to you, showing you his phone. "Dr. Banner's there. You could talk to him and Tony about that signal."

"I don't know any more about it than last time I was there and I doubt they do either," you say. Your eyes feel like you've got lead weights hanging off your lower lids.

Steve looks simultaneously irritated and crestfallen. "Yeah, of course we can go and say hi," you tell him. "I'm just saying that I don't think trying to use work as an excuse is gonna pan out in this situation." You shrug. "You're not the Black Widow, it can just be a social call."

"Okay," says Steve, and then, after tapping out his reply with both thumbs, "Thanks. You're right, I mean."

It rankles you a little that he thinks he needs to use work as an excuse to you if he wants to see his friends. Honestly it rankles you that you have to be the one telling Steve Rogers it's fine that he wants to drag you along to visit friends, because you're so used to the reverse of that. "You remember Dot and Lucy?" you say eventually, and he gives you an eloquent look. "Yeah, exactly. If anything, you can consider this payback for that."

It was kind of a litmus test for you back then, how girls treated Steve. You could understand that they didn't particularly want to be seen with him, considering that a girl's reputation back then was about as complex, fragile, and unnavigable as a spiderweb, but girls who just ignored Steve - or worse, treated him like crap - didn't get very far with you. You'd be polite, show them a good time, and drop them off at home and you wouldn't take them out again after that.

You still remember laughing, your whole body feverish-hot and you were so terrified by the fact that the drinks weren't getting you drunk, back in that bar when you said, "I'm turning into you," to Steve, and he wasn't even hurt by it even though it was a shitty, hurtful thing to say. Well, you should have been so lucky to turn into Steve Rogers, and if you were so inclined you might think this whole situation was a little bit like poetic justice.

You're not mad, anyway, and you get over your bitterness on the subway into Manhattan. You get off in Midtown and get milkshakes and walk the rest of the way up because soon it'll be too cold to want to walk much of anywhere. The leaves are changing color along the park and you think about how many years of that you missed. It's such a simple thing, but you forgot how damn beautiful the world could be and seeing all the yellows and reds against the blue sky does something strange and profound to remind you.

Steve is talking to the receptionist about something like a dog or a baby when Sam Wilson (Falcon: Threat level as yet to be assessed) comes out of the elevator with a big white grin for him. They shake hands and then Wilson pulls Steve into a one-armed hug, slapping Steve on the back. He does a sort of double-take when he sees you and you catch the instant of disbelief and fear in his gaze, but he recovers quickly.

"Hey, man," he says, offering you his hand. "You look a lot different than last time I saw you. A lot better."

You jokingly make a fist with your left hand and say, "Does that look a little bit more familiar?" and then, at his slightly frozen grin, "Sorry, I forgot Steve's the only one who likes my bad jokes."

"Nah, I just wasn't expecting it, is all," Wilson says. "The way he tells it you always were the funny one. Uh, is it okay if I call you Bucky?"

You shrug. "That's what people call me," you say. People meaning Steve, mostly, but it doesn't feel like it'd be a good idea to say no to that question. "Or just Barnes," you add after a beat, giving him a better option.

"Sam Wilson," he says. "Nice to meet you. I don't think the first time really counted."

"Yeah," you agree. "I'm gonna want a do-over on that first impression."

"No time better than the present," Sam replies, his grin still in place, before turning back to Steve and heading for the elevator. Steve follows, glancing at you, and you trail him. "Hey, they're waiting for us upstairs. I gotta say, the V.A. has nothing on this place. I'm gonna have to talk to them about getting some of this bio-engineering stuff, because it's a lot more appealing than having to punch a code into a keypad everywhere I go. JARVIS, don't tell Tony I called you 'appealing'."

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir," says JARVIS politely, and the elevator whirrs to life and you stare at yourself in the mirrored wall, wondering if you're ever going to get to a point where this building doesn't almost make you go away from yourself every time.

The elevator takes you to a different floor than either of the two you've been to before, a big open conference room that reminds you of the World Security Council room, although you're not entirely certain why you know what the World Security Council room looked like. Natasha is there, her red hair a dead giveaway that you spot immediately. So is Stark, who is engaged in demonstrating something to her while she looks predictably unimpressed.

There's also another man about Stark's age with greying dark hair, wearing a slightly shabby-looking suit, who must be Dr. Banner, and a younger man with that air of sniper stillness around him who is clearly Hawkeye. You've seen all their pictures, of course, but just like reading the synopsis of movie is always an entirely different experience than seeing the movie itself, meeting people is always different from seeing pictures of them. "Hi Steve, James," says Natasha as soon as the door opens, and Stark choruses, "Well, look what the cat dragged in!"

"Excuse _you,_ " says Sam, sliding into a chair next to Natasha and taking Stark's thing-that looks-like-a-pen-but-clearly-isn't-a-pen from her while Stark visibly bristles.

"Dr. Banner, Clint," says Steve, herding you forward with a hand on your shoulder. You straighten up a bit, instinctually, caught halfway between being a little kid, presented to relatives you'd never met before, and the asset, demonstrated to an interested party. "This is James Barnes. Bucky, this is Bruce Banner and Clint Barton."

They both politely get up and come toward you. Banner is immediately interesting to you because he so clearly telegraphs the fact that, in this body at least, he is not a threat. He smiles at you warmly as he shakes your hand, and says, "Welcome back. It's nice to meet you," and you say, "Thank you. It's nice to meet you too."

Barton gives you an assessing gaze and reaches out for a shake too. His grip is tighter than Banner's was, and he says, "I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do on the range sometime, if you're up for it. You've got quite the reputation as a marksman," which almost makes you laugh.

"Sure," you say, and then nodding toward Steve, "You know where to find me."

"Cap only ever texts Natasha back," Barton says, "so we may be playing a game of six degrees of separation if we decide to go that route."

"That's not true," Steve says immediately, indignant. "None of you ever text me. Tony leaves me voicemails because he doesn't believe I can type."

"Yeah, voicemails which you never return," Stark mutters, and Natasha laughs.

Steve doesn't dignify that with a response, which probably explains why he doesn't return the voicemails either. "Thor couldn't make it?"

"On account of being in another dimension," Stark agrees. "I guess Asgardian politics are keeping him busy enough for both realms right now. He sends his regards, though. We Skype."

"Incredible," says Dr. Banner, shaking his head. "Dr. Foster would be very irritated that you're referring to trans-dimensional communication as Skype, you know."

"Yeah, yeah." Stark waves his hand. Steve takes a seat and you sit in the one next to him, Natasha on Steve's left and Sam on your right. "So, RoboCop, you manage to decode anything about that signal?"

"No," you say, wondering how to bring up a screen in this room until Stark catches your roving gaze and does it for you, the wave pattern stretching out across the space above the table. "I saw the GPS locations of the two most recent signals, though, and when those are added to the map --" you scroll through until you find the location map, and then rapidly dot it with locations where you can remember Hydra bases existing. They're much further north, in Europe, but the pattern configuration is very similar. "There are predictable variables for how far apart each of these bases could be in order to ensure communication happened swiftly, even in the event of an electronic blackout," you say. "Based on what I'm seeing, the locations these signals were sent from follow that pattern, although that doesn't mean they're Hydra, just that it could be somebody with a similar set of protocols."

"There were never any Hydra enclaves in Northern Africa that I'm aware of," says Natasha. She looks at you, and then adds, "Doesn't mean they don't exist."

You shrug and nod. "Part of what made - makes - them so resilient is that nobody in the organization knows everything," you say. "Some cells operate completely independent of others. I don't know that anyone, even including Alexander Pierce, knew the full extent of Hydra's reach in the world." You blow out a breath. "I know a lot, but I -- operated mainly out of Europe, North America, and the Middle East. I don't know everything either."

"Even Johann Schmidt didn't know everything," Steve says flatly from beside you. "Hydra wouldn't have survived his death if he'd been the only one who knew everything."

"So we got some signals that could or could not be bogies," says Sam, "some locations that could or could not be bases, and some bases that could or could not be Hydra." He looks at the screen. "Is it just me, or are they getting bigger, too?"

"They are definitely getting bigger, ten points to you," says Stark. "Whoever's controlling these things, my guess would be that they're testing ways to get better amplitude. And, if I may point out, these signals are moving west, which means --"

"Toward us." Natasha folds her arms, hands on her elbows. "Well, I guess if nothing else we'll know what they are when they hit New York."

"Tony and I have been working on trying to replicate them in lab," Banner says, and then, at Steve, Barton, and Sam's alarmed looks, "In a controlled setting. A very controlled setting. Trust me, it would have to be a controlled setting for me to be comfortable with it. We don't all react as well to being blown up or set on fire as some of you guys, no offense."

"None taken," say Steve and Tony at the same time. Sam snorts a laugh.

"Right," says Banner. "No luck yet - we're dealing with a lot of variables here, but considering the lack of hours Tony's been sleeping, I think we should have it soon." He looks at you, then. "Do you think you'd recognize it as Hydra or not Hydra if you were exposed to it?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Natasha cuts in abruptly, her voice low and serious.

You raise your eyebrows at her slightly. "I don't know," you answer Banner honestly. "There's a good chance."

"I have to agree with Natasha," Steve says quietly from beside you, in a voice that brooks no argument. "I'm not comfortable with the idea of exposing any of us to it until we know what it is and what it does." He gives you a look that says, you know what they did to you, and now you're just volunteering to jump right back into those waters and see if you float?

"Okay, okay, no human testing." Stark leans back in his chair, spinning the not-a-pen in his fingers, the one he was showing to Natasha before. You feel slightly irritated that Steve just took that decision away from you, whether it was a bad choice to make or not. And you're a little surprised that it was Banner who suggested that they test it on you. He must know you're hard to kill, though, and he probably also knows the importance of giving somebody a chance to redeem themselves. It's nice that he thought that way. If he thought that way. "So basically we're still more or less at a dead end. Let's get a pizza."

"I'm all for pizza," says Barton, who has been pretty quiet through the whole thing, though he's clearly also been paying attention. "Barnes, you like pizza?"

"Yeah?" you answer, taken aback. Does he think that since you didn't get fed pizza in Mother Russia you've developed some kind of adverse reaction to it? You're still human, and more importantly you're American. Of course you like pizza.

"Good," says Barton. "I trust you a little bit more now. And I was serious about the shooting range."

++

There's some kind of rooftop deck with a heated enclosure where all the walls are glass. It's a nice view, you'll give it that, you think, sitting and eating your pizza. Steve, Sam, and Dr. Banner are outside, standing near the edge and pointing at various things on the horizon. Natasha sits down next to you and picks up a slice. You glance at her, and then go back to reading Sam's lips.

She says something to you in Russian, and it takes you a second before your brain translates it for you, and apparently that second is enough for her to feel that she needs to repeat it. "You should be careful," she says.

You look over at her expressionless face and tranquil green eyes. She's comfortably quiet for several minutes, until she says, "They told us we'd never see you again, you know. I thought I was pretty special that I saw you a second time, although I think most people would call that unlucky, considering the circumstances. Now I don't know what to think."

"Sure you do," you say. There's another pause.

"You have most of it back now, don't you?" she asks, the slice of pizza hanging untouched from her hand.

"I think so."

"So do I." She looks out at the line of Steve's shoulders against the sky. "Except for the things that aren't there for me to get back. Which is why I'm telling you, you should be careful." She finally takes a bite of her pizza and chews it furiously.

"Thanks for the advice," you say, as Steve turns around, grinning a stupid grin, and waves at you. "But if you think careful is an option I'm afraid you don't know Steve very well."

++

You take the train back home - "The Subway, Rogers, really?" Sam asks jokingly. "Couldn't you afford something a little bit more swanky, or does S.H.I.E.L.D. really pay that badly?" - and by the time Steve unlocks the door there's a buzz inside you that has grown insistent. "Thanks for coming," he says, turning toward you, "I know it's hard to tell but I think they actually like you. I couldn't tell for about a year and a half if Natasha liked me or not, but --"

You silence him by grabbing his shirt and kissing him, walking him backwards until the backs of his legs hit the couch. Obediently, he sits, and you straddle him. "Buck, what's--" he starts to ask (he asked that before, too) and you shake your head. He looks at you, his hand coming up to hold the corner of your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek, and kisses you again.

You bite his lip and he makes a noise that seems hot but shocked. His hand shifts into your hair and he pulls a little, surprising a groan out of you, making your hips jerk forward. He's red-faced when he looks at you again. Something knowing in his eyes. He grabs for both of your wrists and holds them away from your body until you reverse his grip and pin his hands against the back of the couch instead. His mouth still strains forward for kisses. You can feel how hard he is when you rock your hips down against him. It thrills you, and you're just as hot for it as he is. Maybe more.

He works one hand free, not the one pinned by your left, and grabs your hair again, using it to pull your head back slightly so that he can kiss a trail down your neck, hot sucking kisses that are a delicious counterpoint to the sting of his fingers in your hair. You groan, feeling slightly like you're melting, and he tumbles you off his lap, pushing you down onto the couch and holding you there with his arm across your chest while he works your pants open.

The pressure of his arm on your chest cuts off your air supply a little, but only enough that it makes you dizzy, and perversely you like that too. Maybe there'll be another bruise there tomorrow. Maybe you want that.

He puts his hot mouth on your stomach, removing the arm on your chest and using both hands to yank your pants and underwear down at once. "Steve!" you say in surprise, and he looks up at you questioningly, giving you the chance to get out of this if you want, but you just put one hand over your face and manage to say, "Don't stop."

He can't have had a lot of experience with this, if any, but it probably doesn't matter. He gets his mouth on you and sucks, and your metal fingers clench against the side of the couch. You look down at the fan of his eyelashes against his cheeks, the look of concentration on his face, just for a few moments. It's too much to keep looking any longer.

Your hips jump when he moves his tongue against the underside of your cock, and he pushes them down roughly. You try to wrap your legs around him, and moves his hands to pin your thighs down and apart. You cry out, saying his name again, and he sucks harder, takes you in deeper. You look at the ceiling, and then down at him again, the long stretch of his back and his hips moving a little bit too. It's staggeringly, burningly hot to you that it's doing that to him. You make a garbled noise and cover your eyes with your hand.

You manage to say "Steve," again when you're about to come but that's the only coherent thing you're able to do, and he glances up at you but just keeps sucking. You try to say 'fuck' but it just comes out as a string of nonsense consonants; when you come, he swallows it down, waits until you go still, and then pulls away, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth.

He rises up over you, the front of his pants tented out, and something in your gut stirs again immediately. You can tell he's prepared for that to be the end of it, but instead of letting him pull away you turn over, kicking your pants off the rest of the way, and arch your hips up, offering yourself to him. You hear his inhalation of breath and then he says, "Stay where you are, okay? I'll be right back."

You raise your head a little to watch him hurry into the bedroom, pulling his shirt off as he goes, and then press your face back into the couch cushions when he comes back carrying the tube of lubricant. He gets behind you and sounds amused -- christ, how can he be calm at a time like this -- for a second when he says, "The couch might be too small for this," but then he lifts up your hips with one hand, angling you toward him, and slides a slippery finger inside you.

You swear, and you're still slightly oversensitive from coming so recently, but he keeps going. He seems more rushed than he did last time you did it, and you stifle a grin against a pillow, until he withdraws his fingers, adjusts your hips again, and pushes inside you. He's so hard and so hot that you lose any grip you may have had on smugness and instead you just let out a long, low sound.

He doesn't waste any time. One of his hands is on your hip, holding you where he wants you, and the other fists into your hair again, pulling slightly. There's apparently no danger of him being afraid to break you this time; he's fucking you hard and fast, punching soft noises out of you with every thrust. Between your quick panting breaths and the moans coming out of your open mouth, you get a little dizzy again, and when he tugs your hair, turning you so that you can see his face, you shudder all over at the sight of him and your eyes roll back in your head as you come a second time.

You feel his thrusts grow shorter, jerkier, and it's less than a minute before he comes too. He goes very still for a few moments after, but doesn't slump down onto you, just pulls out carefully and settles to the side. You turn over too, shifting into a sitting position next to him. Your mind is almost completely blank; you pull your t-shirt down from where it's ridden up almost to your armpits. There's a wet spot on the couch, and you laugh, which seems to startle Steve a little.

"What is it?" he asks, and then, when you point, he laughs too. "I didn't even think about that," he says, running his hand over his face and hair. He pauses, and then, "Boy, you must have really liked that pizza."

You snort out another laugh and smack him gently in the side of the head. "Get up," he says, gesturing for you to move. "I need to clean that off before it sets."

"I don't know," you say, looking down at it. "This may be something that requires professional expertise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers a Hydra technician who was kind to him, who he was later forced to kill.


	7. aversion

  1.             _aversion_



"Is it okay if Sam comes over?" Steve asks, looking up from his phone. He's next to you on the couch, but both of you are sort of curled up at opposite ends of it, him with his cup of coffee and his phone, you with the book you're reading. 

"Yeah," you say. "Steve, it's your apartment, you don't have to ask me that." 

Steve frowns at you a little. "You live here too," he says, and then texts Sam back. He sits back against the couch, looking at nothing in particular and picking up his coffee to sip on it. "You know, it's funny," he says. "I've been thinking, since the other day. They were all teasing me about only texting Natasha back, but Natasha's the only one who really texts me." He gives that sad half-smile that has a lot of practice living on his face. "They're good teammates, but they're busy people." 

You have spent a not-insignificant amount of time thinking about how lonely Steve has been the past couple of years, and hearing him say this now, an acknowledgement that this is just one of the many ways Steve has been let down by people - that his teammates aren't really his friends - twists that knife you almost forgot was buried in your heart. At least you've been here for him, you think, but maybe not here for him in much more than your physical presence. 

These remarkable people do seem to be the sort to hold themselves carefully away from the reality of the world and people and most relationships. Things were a lot different during the war; Morita, Jones, Dernier, Falsworth, and Dugan had certainly been remarkable too, but also immediately and accessibly human. Steve never had a chance to be anything other than human to you, either. Maybe that makes you a lucky son of a bitch. "Maybe they're waiting for you to text them," you say, to say something. 

Steve laughs. "I guess," he says. "It seems a little odd texting Thor to ask him if he wants to get coffee, though, doesn't it? And Tony -- I don't think Tony's really the kind of guy you meet for lunch." You can picture the kind of press attention that would grab immediately; you can practically see the headlines splashed across the gossip rags. _Captain America and Iron Man grab lunch in Midtown_! It kind of makes you shudder to imagine his life being such an -- an event. He puts his phone down. "Sam's gonna come by this afternoon. I guess I should tidy up."

You glance pointedly around; there are generally very few furnishings in general, a fact which hearkens back to before the war when the two of you couldn't afford anything to furnish anywhere with. You do miss seeing Steve's drawings pinned up to the wall, though. Sometimes he used to leave you scraps of paper with notes scribbled on them, quick caricatures of himself with speech bubbles telling you he'd be home at four-thirty, occasionally drawings of you schmoozing up a pinup girl when he'd gone to bed before you got home from dancing (this wasn't hard, on nights you went dancing, because unless Steve was along with you, you often stayed out until four in the morning). 

Steve just shrugs at you and starts replacing books on the shelves. You've read through most of his collection at this point, and if you need to reference something you'll know where it is, so it doesn't bother you. You start to clear up the sprawling wreck of the timeline from the table and when you've arranged it all back into the manila folder the way it goes, you take it to your bedroom and put it under your bed. Natasha seeing it didn't bother you as much, mostly because she already knew the kinds of things that Hydra had made you do. Sam probably does too, but it feels somehow too private to let him see just yet. Too early to air your dirty laundry.

You shave your face and get dressed and replace yourself casually on the couch as if nothing has changed, no preparations have been made. Steve is in a sweater and jeans now too, making a fresh pot of coffee; Sam shows up around one in the afternoon and accepts a mug when it's offered to him, smiles at you and says, "Hey man, how you doin'?" and you tell him you're fine.

Ostensibly he's here to see Steve, though you suspect that Sam is the kind of person who tends to feel a sort of proprietary ownership over the wellbeing of most people he knows, which means he would have wanted to check up on you, too. Anyway, the way things are right now means that you and Steve are working as a unit and checking up on one of you would mean checking up on both, so it's a moot point. He and Steve are talking about Sam's work at the V.A., and you wonder if it's rude to keep reading your book. 

Eventually they include you in the conversation too; Sam asks you about how you like New York in 2014, and what you thought about Stark Tower, and you do your best to answer in words which will arouse no red flags in Sam's mind, which you are aware is trained in looking for signs of distress. You don't think you seem distressed, at least.

Steve shows Sam around the apartment and you watch the easy way that Steve claps a hand on his shoulder, how they make each other laugh. Sam Wilson is trying to be Steve's friend, and right now he might be doing a better job of it than you have been. It makes you cold inside. 

They go out onto the balcony, which you and Steve almost never use, where you suppose they think you won't be able to hear them. You can, by straining a little, and even without that, you can read lips. They aren't smart (or secretive) enough to turn fully around and put their backs to you, so you go to the kitchen island to get a cup of coffee and sit with your book observing them. 

"So how are you, man?" Sam asks, leaning against the balcony with one arm, his other hand on his hip. He's giving Steve a frank, assessing gaze. "Cause you look pretty good, but that's also a hell of a sadness beard you got going on there." 

Steve snorts and shakes his head, smiling ruefully. "I'm okay," he says. 

"Is that like, okay okay?" Sam presses. "Or is that Captain America 'okay'? I mean, I haven't known you for very long but I already know the difference between those two things. One is most definitely not like the other." 

Steve glances in at you and you are sipping your coffee, your eyes fixed on your book. You turn a page. "I got my best friend back from the dead," he says finally. "Things like that aren't supposed to happen."

"No, and they don't." Sam folds his arms. "I know he has his memories back, but you know that's not exactly the same guy you knew in 1945, right? That it's not ever gonna be the same guy? People change when they go through shit like that, Steve. Like I told you in D.C., people change."

"Neither of us is the same," Steve answers stubbornly. "You're right, he's -- not how he used to be, but he's Bucky anyway. I just wish I could -- help him out, sometimes. I wish there was something I could do. I know there has to be a lot that he's not telling me."

It's a nice thought, and it's definitely true. Steve doesn't know the half of it, and even what he does know, well. Reading your file can't really compare to the lived reality of it. He doesn't need to know. Eventually you'll be able to swallow it all down and not think about it again, and then Steve won't have to worry about it either.

"Listen, man," says Sam, putting his hand on Steve's shoulder. "You know there was a damn good reason that the doctors recommended extensive therapy. And I know we've had this conversation before, more or less, but they recommended it for you too." Steve starts to open his mouth, and Sam runs over him. "Yeah, yeah, I know in the good ole days soldiers didn't talk about getting emotionally fucked by the war, but thankfully in the present we've more or less put that masculinist bullshit to rest, so spare me the 'back in the day' speech, okay, Steve?"

Steve frowns deeply for a moment. "I would talk to someone about it," he said, "if I thought it would help. But I don't want to talk to a stranger, and I'm kind of coming up short of names on my list of people who would understand what it's like to be a genetically engineered supersoldier who fought in World War II and then spent seventy years frozen after a failed attempt at a suicide mission."

Sam looks pointedly in at you, and Steve shakes his head. "No," he says. "I'm not putting anything more on Buck than what he's already carrying. It's enough. Have you seen his file?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "And they made him do some fucked-up stuff. Which is all the more reason that he deserves to be able to give somebody else a little bit of that burden. Both of you do. Somebody who is trained in dealing with this kind of shit, you hear me? Do you get what I'm saying?"

"He's okay, Sam!" Steve says, throwing his hands up. "We're both okay. He's getting better! We went to the grocery store the other day, we go out in public, we're both fine!"

Sam gives Steve a very skeptical look, and you carefully keep yourself from a sardonic laugh. "The worst thing is, honestly," Steve barrels on, "that sometimes _I_ get so angry about what they did to him. The other night he told me that --" he turns away from the window for a second before turning back toward it. "The other night he told me something and I was so goddamn mad about knowing they did that to him that I almost punched a wall. And the thing is, it's not even mine to be angry about."

"Like I'm trying to tell you," Sam says, "that's what therapy is for," and then, "it is yours to be angry about as long as you care about him. Even if he doesn't seem angry now, I'd be surprised if there isn't a pot about to boil inside there. And I'd be more worried if you said you _weren't_ mad." He sighs, stepping back a little from Steve. "Listen, please just promise me you'll at least look into it. I've seen stuff like this before, Steve, and trust me when I say that when the shit hits the fan, and it will hit the fan, you're gonna want to have some kind of support system in place."

"Okay," Steve says. He still looks irate, but then his face softens. "Thanks, Sam. I know you're just trying to help. I'm sorry." He glances in at you again and you look up and catch him looking and smile. He smiles back at you, just slightly. "I appreciate it. I appreciate that you care." 

"Lots of people would care about you if you let 'em, Steve," says Sam, clapping Steve on the shoulder. "You know, after you told me you were giving up and just came back here, I thought that was it, it was over. I thought I had my second chance and blew it. So I'm glad it's not over. 

"Yeah, I -- sorry," Steve says. "I'm sorry I blew you off. I was just too tired to chase him anymore, and then when he turned up, it felt too fragile for a while to even think about bringing anyone else between us."

Sam gives an extremely pointed look between you and Steve, and you think that you'd better be careful, like Natasha said, because Sam is smart and perceptive and will likely pick up on any cues that are given off even accidentally. "It's all right. I deal with vets all the time," he says. "We are a flaky and unpredictable bunch of assholes. I get it. Like I said, I'm just glad to see you again." 

Steve smiles. "Me too," he says, and then Sam glances at his watch and sighs. "I better get going," he says. "I've got a meeting at the V.A. in Harlem at four. They're trying to get me set up as soon as possible, I guess they've got a lot more work than they do people to handle it right now. Doesn't surprise me somehow." He grins at Steve. "Oh, hey. Tony has your bike, by the way. They pulled it out; it was pretty mangled but I guess fixing Captain America's motorcycle occurred to somebody as a priority. Anyway, I brought it up with me when I actually brought my stuff up here for real. It's in his garage now, whenever you want it."

"Thanks," Steve says, looking a little surprised. You've seen pictures of him on the motorcycle but somehow it didn't occur to you that he might still have it, and you're surprised yourself to find that you like the idea. He opens the sliding glass door and the two of them come back inside.

"You are like buried in that book," Sam says as he comes toward you, setting his coffee mug on the kitchen island and craning his neck so he can see what it is. He whistles. "Judith Butler, really? That's some deep shit, man." 

You shrug and then nod, closing the book. "I had a lot of catching up to do," you say, and, "You're right. I read about twenty pages and then I have to stop and think about it for ten minutes and I'm not sure I understand it even then."

"Yeah, the world is a complicated place," Sam says. He's half-right, you think. People were always complicated, it's just that now they've made up a whole new language to describe it. "Anyway, it was nice to see you, I just told Steve here that I've gotta get down and figure out what I'm gonna do for real person work since I don't have seventy years of back pay to supplement my occasional job fighting crime." He grins. "Hope to see you again soon." 

"Yeah," you say, reaching out to shake his hand. "I'm sure you will." 

He gives Steve a quick hug goodbye and says, "Call me anytime, Steve, I'm serious," looking Steve right in the eye, and then goes out the door. His presence leaves a kind of void behind it and you feel irrationally jealous knowing that you used to do the same thing, but not anymore. Now you're just a void in and of yourself. 

Steve deflates slightly, setting his mug on the island too. "Intense conversation?" you ask, nodding your head to indicate the balcony, and he nods.

"He thinks we both should talk to someone," he admits, and you're glad that at least Steve feels he can be honest with you about this. "He's, you know he works with veterans. He thinks we should have taken the doctors' recommendations."

"Maybe," you say. You lift a shoulder in a shrug. You make yourself say the next words. "Maybe someday we'll both be ready to talk about it."

"Maybe," Steve agrees, sitting down next to you. 

++

 Considering you're both a little bit off, it's amazing that nothing goes strange that night. Steve just seems tired in that way he often does, and you watch movies on the couch and eat a lot of Thai food. You keep thinking you should be cooking more, but half the time Steve just says "Let's get takeout," and you're not one to argue with that. You go to sleep in the same bed as Steve and wake up in the same bed as Steve and Sam wouldn't have even noticed because Steve still makes his bed every morning with regulation precision and no sign that anyone was ever there. 

Steve wants to go to the gym, so you skip the run that morning, and you make waffles with the waffle iron that you ordered on Amazon, and you put cinnamon and sliced apples all over them. "Geeze, Buck," Steve says, his mouth stuffed full, "this is really good," which is kind of funny and kind of sad because it wasn't much effort at all. 

You get to the gym and set out the mats and you each wrap your hands. Steve starts out on the bags, and you chin up tirelessly until he comes up behind you and puts his hands on your hips and tugs you down. You don't even flinch, just turn in his grip to face him; he's shirtless, just faintly starting to sweat. He wipes his face with the back of his hand and takes one step away. "You want to spar?" he asks. 

"Sure," you say, thinking of how that ended last time and wondering if it's gonna happen again. You reach into your shorts pocket and pull out a rubber band, scooping your hair back out of your face into a messy knot. "You gonna let me beat you again?"

"You got lucky," says Steve, and you say back, "Oh boy, did I ever," and he laughs and smacks a hand carefully, playfully against your face. 

You pull your own shirt off - less for him to grab you by - and toss it aside, tugging your shorts up on your hips. This time it's you who makes the come-on motion, and you start circling each other immediately. Same as before, Steve on the balls of his feet, his hands up, ready; you, slow and steady, hands at your sides. 

He feints a punch at you and you duck away, coming up closer to him and grabbing for his waist, trying to sweep his legs out from underneath him. He gets his arms around your shoulders and you abandon your grab for his waist to break the armlock, pushing him back away from you with both hands on his chest. 

He catches one of your arms and uses the momentum of it to flip you; you catch him with both legs as you go down and pull him down too. There is a flurry of movement. He locks his arms around your hips as he goes down and yanks himself closer, attempting with the advantage of his greater weight to get you flat and pin you. You still have your legs around him and you lever your arms back to push yourself back up, flipping your positions again so that he ends up with his back against the mat. 

The position isn't entirely secure, and he heaves you off; you fall backwards and both of you scrabble to your feet again. You make the first move this time, grabbing for his neck and shoving him to the side, but he recovers too well and socks you in the gut. You huff and move back, and he follows you, grabbing your shoulder, yanking your arm behind your back. You let him, use the momentum, bend over and flip him over your back, but he catches you and pulls you down with him. 

He ends up on his knees with both arms around you as you attempt to break his hold, and for some reason the prolonged pressure there sends you somewhere else for a moment. Your reaction is a little panicked, and it works, at least until he catches your hand again and gets you into a real armlock, your right arm twisted out behind you and your face ground into the mat.

He lets go of your arm and drapes himself over you then and you think to yourself, _oh yeah_ , because he's definitely hard. Maybe both of you are a little warped, that this is what does it for you. Okay, both of you are definitely more than a little warped, and this one of the least warped things about your relationship. He pants into your hair for a moment and then pulls away, rolling over onto his back and tugging you so that you're between his spread legs. He's -- offering himself up, you realize.

"Yeah?" you ask him, looking down at him. He bites his lip and nods, reaching for the waistband of your shorts. "You have stuff?" you ask, and he reaches into his own pocket, looking slightly ashamed. You just laugh, leaning down to kiss him and plucking the tube from his fingers. Never let it be said that Steve Rogers doesn't come prepared.

For a second you feel really superior, as the two of you are kissing there on the floor - he's holding onto your ass with both hands and you have your hands in fists on either side of his head, bracing yourself. None of the rest of them get to see him like this, you think.

You shift your weight onto one arm, using the other to pull his sweats off, his underwear down. You take a second to just look at him, the whole long line of his body, all that flushed smooth skin, the way it spreads over his muscle just like the most gorgeous anatomy textbook you can think of. "Hey," he says, smiling a small pleased smile that's totally different than that sad half-smile he has so much practice with. "Keep going." 

You look at him, and all of a sudden it is the woman from the blank-walled room underneath you. "Keep going," she says. She's not being specific enough; you don't know what she means. She should have been prepared better, you think -- she slaps the side of your face. "Keep going," she repeats. Does she mean for you to figure this out for yourself?

It lasts maybe five seconds, but when you return to the present, Steve is looking at you with a totally different expression, and all the sweat on your body has gone cold. "Buck?" he asks.

You shake your head, sitting back on your haunches. "I don't think I can," you croak, ashamed. "Not right now. I could, but it wouldn't be --"

"It's okay," Steve says, sitting up immediately, putting his hands on your shoulders. "It's okay, Buck." 

It's a nice thing for him to say. You wish it was true.

++

You get out of the shower later and he's waiting for you in the hallway, still fresh and damp from his own shower. "You were in there for a while," he says quietly.

You reach for him, and he takes you into his arms, stroking the tendrils of your wet hair. "I want to," you say. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Steve says. "Me too. I'm sorry for whatever it was that I said that did it."

"'Keep going,'" you say. It's a pretty simple phrase. Innocuous. "You couldn't have known. I didn't." You think of what Sam said, about sharing the burden. But Steve's the only person you'd want to share it with, and he's carrying more than his own weight already.

"I hate what they did to you." His mouth is against the top of your head, his voice brittle. "I don't even know it all -- I wouldn't even need to know it all -- and I hate it."

"Me too," you say. You think, I hate that by doing it to me they did it to you too. I hate that I depend on you and me depending on you means I just keep hurting you. I hate all the ways I hurt you before. "I'm sorry," you say again.

"It's not your fault," Steve says, which isn't quite the same as saying 'it's okay,' but it's as close as you can get in this situation.

It's not late, but you're tired, and you wring out your hair in your towel and then hang it over the rail in the bathroom and walk naked to Steve's bedroom. He follows you, sits on the edge of the bed when you climb into it, and looks at you. He looks so -- wholesome, in his white t-shirt and his plaid pajama pants. You lean over and kiss him, drawing him further into the bed, and he says against your mouth, "Buck -- you sure?" and then kisses you back.

You're sure of this. You've never been more sure of anything in your life than you are of this. You kiss him and kiss him until your mouths are swollen and you're both lying down in his bed, arms and legs all tangled up together, and that's how you fall asleep - sharing breath, back and forth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During a consensual sexual encounter with Steve, Bucky is triggered by a memory of a forced encounter during his captivity, and cannot continue sex with Steve.


	8. low-pressure system

_8\. low-pressure system_

You get a voicemail message from someone at Stark Industries that feels inevitable. It's the sort of clipped, perfunctory message that you imagine people who work in the legal world are exceptionally good at leaving - it gives precisely nothing away. You need to go down to the tower again. You tell Steve.

"You don't have to come," you offer. He looks more nervous than you have the depth of emotion to be right now, and he shakes his head.

"No," he says. "I want to come." He glances out the window - it's cloudy and grey today, and everything is starting to turn a little bit brown - then back at you again. "I can get my motorcycle out of Tony's garage, finally. He keeps threatening to start charging me rent. I don't know if he knows Sam only just told me about it."

You shrug. You imagine you'll take the car down there, then. "What if it rains?" you ask, and Steve just says dryly, "I won't melt, if that's what you mean."

On the way over, you imagine all the scenarios that Steve might be nervous about. Possible outcomes. Most likely what is weighing heaviest on his mind is the idea that they may take you away from him. The idea clenches around your guts like an iron vise and won't let go. You begin to formulate a plan, in case it's true.

A beautiful redheaded woman who is nothing like Natasha Romanoff is waiting for you at the front desk. Pepper Potts, you realize. CEO of Stark Industries. Though she is tall and fine-boned, you immediately see all the ways that she is soft to make up for Stark's difficult edges - but you would never make the mistake of thinking of her as weak. She smiles at you, round freckled cheeks and wisps of hair escaping her artful ponytail. "Sergeant Barnes," she says, reaching out for your hand, "It's a pleasure to meet you; I'm Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries." She reaches for Steve's hand as well, then. "Captain Rogers. It's nice to see you again. I wanted to take some time out from my schedule to meet with you today. It's important to me that you know how important this was to us. To Tony and me, to Stark Industries." She laughs a little. "If you'll forgive me for being really grandiose, to America as a whole."

She inclines her head toward the elevator bank. "I have a legal representative waiting in my office right now." You follow her into the elevator, and it strikes you that it's brave of her to get into an enclosed space like this with you, even with Steve here. She'd have to be pretty brave in the first place to be involved with Stark, though, so that makes sense. "Normally I'd tell you what a great view I have," she says, holding her hands in front of herself and smiling at your reflection. "But I'm afraid the weather wasn't very cooperative today. Days like this, I miss working out of Malibu."

"Didn't Tony's Malibu house get --" Steve clears his throat and looks a little embarrassed. "Blown up?"

"Yes, it did," Pepper agrees, nodding as if it's only par for the course. "It's being rebuilt - you know Tony, harder, better, faster, stronger, the whole works. But I think Malibu may have lost a bit of its luster for the time being."

You don't think you've ever been to California, but it's just another one of those things you may never know for sure. Up and up goes the elevator, almost to the very top of the building. It's silent. No music. No mechanical noises. Who would have guessed the future would be all about quiet.

The floor you get off on is another one of those floors with a lot of glass; for a moment you look out the window and feel almost as if you're floating above the city. A godlike feeling. No wonder Stark built it this way. "Steve, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to wait outside for this first part," says Pepper apologetically. "It's very sensitive, privileged information. It'll have to be Sergeant Barnes's decision if he wants to share it with you afterwards."

Steve puffs up a little like he's going to protest, but then he abruptly deflates again and takes a seat in a chair so minimal that it must have taken a lot of designing to get that way. "I understand," he says, nodding. You're not sure you understand, but you let Pepper usher you into her office anyway, where another woman you've never seen before is waiting behind a desk.

"Sergeant," says Pepper, and it strikes you as funny for the first time how she keeps referring to you by your rank, when you're not sure you even still have a rank, and nobody has called you Sergeant since Zola in 1945, before they decided to do away with your name, rank, serial number altogether. You realize that in thinking this you have completely missed the introduction, though you have shaken the other woman's hand. "She's been working very hard on your case," Pepper finishes, and you smile at the other woman, who does not quite smile back, and sit down.

The other woman opens a file and starts to spread it out on the desk. "It goes without saying that this is a very complex situation," she says, "with a multitude of jurisdictional issues." You look at the papers she's set out, all words and no pictures. You can vaguely read them from this angle, though you don't know enough legalese to glean anything meaningful from them other than facts about yourself that you already know. You look at Pepper, who is sitting behind the desk now with her hands neatly folded in front of herself, her expression one of neutral, careful understanding.

"--issues of legal responsibility," the lawyer is saying, "considering the mental duress you were under," and you are reading upside down about your transfer from Russia in the 1980s, except you aren't really reading it at all, just picking out words and filling in the rest of the blanks for yourself.

Eventually you give up on reading too and wonder about the ringing in your right ear. There should not be lasting damage there; your body is efficient enough to repair itself within minutes of even a substantial sonic event, yet there it is, a steady high pitched whine that reminds you of a grenade going off too close, a man grabbing you by the shoulder and shaking you, looking you in the face and saying, "He's all right - christ, what is this guy made of?"

"Ultimately, the decision was that should reparations be sought, you would not be personally liable for them," the lawyer said. "Nor will the United States government; should reparations be sought they will be paid from the sum of assets" ("Stop calling it 'he,'" says a man's voice, quiet, familiar. "You know we're not supposed to call it that. It's just the asset." And then: "That was the mistake they made. The Russians. They gave it too loose a leash. What did they expect?") "seized from the estates of former Hydra operatives. In exchange, you agree to remain in the custody of a guardian until such time as the probationary period is satisfied."

"Since you're already living with Steve," says Pepper gently, and Steve's name pulls you back, "we thought he could be your guardian. We've already taken the liberty of getting that legally approved - this isn't a conservatorship, nothing like that. He just has to agree to keep tabs on you for a limited period of time. But I want to make sure you're comfortable with that."

You blink. "Sure," you say. If they thought that would humiliate you -- you laugh. "That's fine," you say. "It seems like I'm getting off easy."

The lawyer looks uncomfortable, and Pepper says, "You've already been through a lot. I think at this point you deserve for some things to be easy," and smiles at you. Her smile is a good smile, a Duchenne smile, that, while practiced, gives a convincing illusion of genuineness. "We're going to go talk to Steve about it now too," she says. "Would you mind waiting here?"

"That's fine," you repeat, letting the ringing in your ears take over again as they both get up and exit. You look out at the city. The grey city. It's started to rain. What about Steve's motorcycle?

"Sir," says JARVIS from above and around you, "Pardon my intrusion, but I can't help but notice that your heart rate and respiration have undergone a significant increase, consistent with anxiety or distress. Is there anything I can do to be of assistance?"

JARVIS sounds nothing like anyone who ever hurt you, and none of them ever came from everywhere and nowhere at once. "Yeah," you say. "Yeah, can you just -- keep talking to me? Is that something I can ask you to do?"

"Of course, sir," JARVIS says. "It would be my pleasure. Perhaps you'd like me to tell you about some of the building's security measures?"

"That sounds good," you answer, your voice very quiet, and so JARVIS does, in minute detail; he tells you about air ducts, security cameras, biometric sensors. All of this would be potentially useless against an asset of your caliber, but somehow knowing that it exists, being able to picture it all, makes the ringing in your ears go away. It's not the feeling of being safe, because nobody is ever safe. It's the feeling of knowing you could get under the building's skin, if you needed to. Of not being -- trapped here.

"Thanks," you say finally, interrupting his description of the sprinkler system. "Thank you, JARVIS."

"Of course, Sergeant Barnes," JARVIS says. "You are very welcome. Your heart rate has returned to within normal parameters. I am glad I was able to help. Please let me know if you need anything else."

He's a computer program, you know that, not a person in the traditional sense. Stark made him. Somehow it's staggeringly funny that Stark, of all people, managed to make something this courteous and generous, but then Stark seems to surround himself with those kind of people. Maybe it helps cushion the world for him. Gives him something to bounce off of.

It's funny, you think, that they place so much importance on whether or not you were responsible for what you did. To you, it doesn't particularly matter, because all of those things happened and you did them whether or not you wanted to, whether or not you were in control. Someone gave you an order; you pulled a trigger. Simple story. All these questions of guilt and innocence, you think, are a lot more for _them_ than they are for _you._

Pepper comes back in with Steve and without the lawyer. Steve looks faintly singed with anger around the edges - poor Steve, getting angry on your behalf when you can't even really manage it yourself - but also relieved. They aren't going to take you away from him after all.

Pepper asks you to sign something, and you do, although you are momentarily conflicted about whether to use your right hand or your left. Ultimately it doesn't matter; you scrawl your signature and think it would probably look the same coming from either hand.

++

You're in the elevator, going down to the garage so Steve can pick up his motorcycle - "I don't mind the rain," he says. "I'm sure you can get a car to take you, if you want." You don't mind the rain either and manage a smile that is less sickly than you feel inside at the feeling of sinking down, down - you've never been that high in the tower before. Pepper's office is the closest you've been to the top.

"Captain, Sergeant?" says JARVIS from the ceiling. "Mr. Stark has requested you visit his lab, upon being notified of your presence in the building."

"You up for it?" Steve asks, shooting you a sidelong glance, and you say, "Sure, why not." The elevator slows and lets you out on Stark's level. Technically they're all Stark's levels, though, aren't they?

Stark is grunting at something and there's the sound of clattering from the other room. "That...could have gone better," says his voice, and then JARVIS smoothly interrupts to tell him that the two of you are here and he says, "Always at my finest moments."

He's wiping his hands on his pants when he turns around the corner. "Capsicle, Bicentennial Man!" he says. "Truly a pleasure to have America's national treasures in my tower. The thing with Pepper, did the thing with Pepper go okay?"

Steve glances at you and you nod and shrug. Stark just gives you both a dubious look and beckons you further into the maze of mechanical parts and glowing screens. "Barnes," he says, pointing at you, and you raise your eyebrows at him. "I was going through some of the uh, scans of the arm they took, and I know that your service dog here doesn't want me messing with you, but there are a couple of things you might be interested in."

He sits down on a rolling stool and pulls up an exploded diagram of your arm, which he rotates so that it's upside down and works his way through until he's somewhere in your tricep. He isolates an element and it glows red. "This guy," he says, pulling the thread until it ends all the way up where the arm connects to your shoulder, "Is here to cause you pain. Remotely, I mean. It looks like it's a control device meant to signal directly to your nervous system, and it looks like it can be activated from a distance of...say...up to about a hundred meters away." He gives you a canny look. "I'm guessing you didn't get usually get that far away."

"No," you say. "Not in -- the past twenty years or so." They had started keeping you carefully in hand by then. The years and years of repeated conditioning and memory wipes must have started turning your brain to cheesecloth; hence the erratic behavior. Hence the greater need for control. You don't remember this particular failsafe being installed, but you were often unconscious when they worked on your arm.

"I think I know how to -- who am I kidding, I can disable it, it'll take me about three and a half minutes. Maybe five." Stark shrugs. "Now that you're officially, you know, back in the world again, I thought you might want it taken care of."

You glance at Steve and find that he is looking at Stark. "You want him on the team, don't you?" he asks. "That's what this is about."

"In the event, however unlikely, of another massive catastrophe, yes," Stark says. "I think it would be useful to have him on our side. And I would feel better about that if, you know, this was disabled."

"You know I was the one who cut the brake lines," you say abruptly. "On your parents' car. You have to know that. Why are you doing this? Why do any of this?"

Stark just looks at you, uncharacteristically silent for a long few moments, before he says, "I know Rogers here remembers a different version of dear old dad than me. I guess you probably do too. But for your benefit, allow me to share a couple of things about the Howard Stark I knew: Brilliant scientist. Shitty, shitty dad." He pauses again. "I'm not saying I'm glad he's dead, but even as a little kid I kind of knew he had it coming, one way or another. The number of times I saw him make my mother cry?"

He shakes his head, and you try to reconcile this Howard with the Howard you knew briefly, a charming cad who always seemed mostly harmless. Strange things happen to people who lose things they hold dear. "All of that -- messy 'happy families' shit aside, let me make one thing very clear. I do not hold you --" he points one finger right at you -- "responsible for what happened. In fact, I think we have a common enemy. And I think that in the 'shit we have all been put through' Olympics, you win the gold medal. Normally I would be a lot more callous about this -- seriously, ask Pepper, she would agree -- but I've been trying to turn over a new leaf lately. So fuck it. We've all done things we're not proud of. Me? My company -- my weapons -- are probably responsible for millions of deaths worldwide." He shrugs. "All we can do is move forward."

Steve looks poleaxed, and you take a moment to mock applaud. "Thank you, I wish I could say I planned that out beforehand," says Stark. "You want the remote-activated torture device out of your arm, or what? Come over here before I change my mind."

You slip your jacket and sweatshirt off and Stark fiddles with your shirtsleeve for a moment before saying, "Okay, not to increase the homoerotic tension in the room to a stifling level or anything, but I need the t-shirt off too."

You look at Steve for a second, probably a fatal flaw in judgment if Stark's attention wasn't fully focused on your arm, and take off your t-shirt. Steve sits down and he has that little frown on his face, a line settling right between his eyebrows, like he either thinks this is really uncomfortable for you, or that it _should be_ uncomfortable for you, and it's distressing to him that you don't seem uncomfortable.

You stopped being uncomfortable with letting people do as they pleased with your body, especially your arm, around probably the mid 1950s, with a few notable exceptions. It doesn't -- it makes sense that it would make Steve feel weird, because it's not a normal thing to do to just let yourself be poked and prodded. It's just something that _became_ normal to you, eventually.

Stark's got a finger in your arm and he's squinting. He gives up eventually and gets a tool, craning his neck to look at what he's doing. "This is gonna hurt for a second," he says, and almost before he's done warning you, your whole shoulder lights up on fire for a brief instant of time, and then it goes away. "There we go. I mean, it's kind of a temporary fix, I'd have to rework a few things if we wanted to, say, give you a little bit more sensation in that arm -- you typically feel, what, heat, pressure sensitivity, that kind of thing? But it'll do for now."

"I'll think about it," you say distantly, and rotate your arm when he's out of the way. Steve is looking like he would really like to leave. "Thanks. And - I am sorry. About your parents."

Stark waves his hand dismissively and spins on his chair, rotating back toward the hydraulic gauntlet he must have been working on before. "What is it they say? Let bygones be bygones? That doesn't really sound like something I'd say, but there you go. I said it. You want to thank me, just have my back next time aliens attack New York City, and we'll be square."

You get up, pulling your t-shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket back on, and lead the way back out into the hall. "That was a pretty brave move," Steve says to you, quietly, as you wait for the elevator. You're not sure if he means telling Stark about his parents, or letting him mess with your arm, or what.

"Nah," you say. "Bravery is your thing. That was just good old self-serving curiosity."

Steve shakes his head, the ghost of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

++

You ride the motorcycle back across the bridge to Steve's apartment, your arms wrapped around him and your head down to avoid the rain. It's not a hard rain, and it's not cold enough out yet that it really has any bite to it. Like he said - neither of you is going to melt. Despite the lack of helmets, the taxis and other cars honking and weaving around you, you feel strangely secure. Serenity in chaos, something stupid like that.

You remember that Steve had a motorcycle before, too. It wouldn't necessarily have been the vehicle of choice you would have picked for him, but given his reckless spirit (and its maneuverability) it kind of makes sense in the end. As for the excess of style that it gives him, you figure that was probably just a happy accident.

"Should I shave this?" he asks you, running his hands over his neat beard, when you get home. "I don't know why I started growing it. I liked the idea of it making me less recognizable, I guess."

You don't know how often he used to get recognized without it, but you think that with the golden hair, the shoulders, the height, he's kind of recognizable anyway. He doesn't look a lot like other people in the city, even the fitter ones. He never used to look like anyone else other than himself to you either, though, even before the serum. He's always had a certain singular distinctiveness to him that's probably just all Steve Rogers. "I don't know," you say, touching his face, running your hands over it too. "If you want to. I like you either way. Sam did call it a sadness beard, though."

"I know," Steve says, making a face. He glances down, maybe bashful, and in doing so his gaze lands on your arm. He reaches out to touch it. "Did they ever use that on you?" he asks. "The -- thing Tony disconnected."

You're quiet, and after a second he says, "I'm sorry, I don't -- I didn't really have a right to ask you that."

You shake your head. "I was just trying to remember," you say. "I don't know that they did, but I don't know that they ever needed to. Like Stark said. By the time that was installed, they weren't letting me go very far."

Steve nods, his eyes big and earnest. He runs his hand along the planes of the arm and you -- he doesn't not touch it, but he doesn't usually make a point of touching it like this, either. It feels. It doesn't feel like he's touching your human skin, but it still feels good, in a strange way. "The first couple of weeks after the serum was successful, I didn't think I'd ever get used to people just -- touching me, all the poking and prodding and tests. But I did start to get used to it after a little while. I didn't _like_ it, but I got used to it."

"That was what you were thinking about, wasn't it?" you ask him. He glances up at you, questioning. "When you were sitting there, and Stark was messing with my arm. You had this look on your face, like --" you mimic it, turning the corners of your mouth down and drawing your eyebrows together.

Steve laughs. "I guess so," he says. He shifts a little bit and blows out a breath. "I know -- I know you don't really like talking about this kind of stuff, and neither do I, but. I want you to know that it means a lot to me, what you do tell me. It means a lot to me that you trust me enough."

You blink at him, surprised. "It means a lot that you listen," you say, after a moment. You scrub your right hand through your hair because Steve's still touching your left. "It's not always --" You pause, trying to think of the right words to say. "If I could tell anyone I would tell you," you admit. "But some of it is just -- I lived through it once, and I lived it a second time remembering it all. And that's enough, y'know? I don't need to -- those parts of my life don't deserve anything else than that, considering they shouldn't have happened at all."

Steve nods. "I think I understand," he says. "I know I've said it before, but -- I'm here for you. Whatever you need."

You look at him, wondering not for the first time nor for the last what you did to deserve him. It's not that the two of you have never fought - god knows there were periods of your lives growing up where you couldn't go a day and a half without fighting over something - but there's something that has always been comforting in the extreme about knowing that even if you fight with him he'll take you back. That he can't see the chancre growing at the root of you, or that he knows and chooses to ignore it. "I don't get you sometimes," you say. Then, you manage to drag the words out of yourself: "Sometimes I think if you -- some of the things, if I told you, you wouldn't be able to -- you wouldn't want to be friends with me anymore. Because who does things like that?"

Steve frowns at you. "None of it was your fault, though," he says. "Like Pepper said: You're not responsible."

You shuffle a little. You let him have it, for now. Someday you're gonna have to tell him that the Bucky Barnes in his mind, who has a heart of gold and a soul of shiny brass, doesn't really exist. Never has. But not tonight. "Will you tell me -- tell me something nice," you ask, feeling weak as you say it. "Tell me about something that happened before?"

He looks surprised. "Of course I will, Buck," he says. "How about the summer I turned ten? Well, your ma still hadn't turned the corner on whether she couldn't stand me or actually didn't mind me hanging around, and you were so stubborn, trying to convince her that since mine would be working all day and neither of us were in school, she had to throw me a birthday party --"

It takes you back to a time when things are bright and warm in your memory. You remember your mother, and his, and most of all you remember Steve, skinny gap-toothed Steve, the way his face lit up with this pure, unadulterated shocked joy, at the pie your mother had made for him, with its little sparkler lighting up the dim kitchen. You remember the fireworks, and Steve, his arm around you, leaning against you and saying, "Thanks, Bucky. This has been the best day of my life."

++

"What really surprises me is that there aren't more of him," Banner is saying. "They had him for seventy years; that's certainly long enough to duplicate some kind of working replica of Erskine's serum."

"The serum, sure." Stark. "What I'm thinking is that it wasn't the serum, it was the programming that was the real problem. They had to find somebody with --"

 _The killing instinct_ , you think. ("This is him?" says someone else in accented English - for Zola's benefit, as Zola doesn't speak Russian. "He looks strong, certainly, but he is nothing compared to Captain America."

Well, nobody is really anything compared to Captain America, because they got a real doozy when they picked Steve Rogers for that particular job. Now the outside matches the inside, is all. You attempt a smile, and Zola looks at you sharply. "Physically, he is comparable." He sounds defensive, maybe. You smile more, through the haze and blur of whatever they've given you to make you docile. "And I must mention that Sergeant Barnes had racked up quite the kill list in his employment with the United States Army, as well.")

 _The killing instinct,_ you think, coming back to the present. Chasing the red mist with a sniper's cold calm.

You're in the tower again. A new occurrence of the signal. Closer to home this time. Close enough that next time, if the increase in amplitude remains consistent, it will reach the east coast in its next iteration. Steve was out when you got the call, and you thought to yourself, _I can do this by myself. This is something I should be able to do_. So you took the car to Manhattan, and you said hello to the woman at the front desk, and rode the elevator up by yourself while JARVIS told you about the most recent upgrades to his system - self-upgrades; he upgrades himself now, within parameters set by Stark. He learns, he self-creates.

Banner and Stark have not caught sight of you yet. JARVIS has not told them you are here. You aren't offended, precisely, by what they are talking about. You're an oddity. It makes sense to wonder about you. And they're right, anyway. "I hope you're not planning on trying to create any more supersoldiers," you say eventually, breaking the silence. "I think between the two of us we have more than enough emotional problems for an entire army."

"Yeah, preaching to the choir there, buddy," says Stark, turning around. They have the signals pulled up on the screen in front of them. This most recent one is enormous, an outlier, triple the amplitude of any of the past versions. "Hey, where's your better half? Isn't he supposed to be babysitting you?"

"He's coming," you say, not letting Stark rile you up. Banner has the kindness to look offended on your behalf, which is a little funny.

Steve, beardless since this morning, shows up with Sam in tow about ten minutes later, and Natasha and Barton are right on their heels. "I got your message," she says, glancing at the screen.

"So, that's...bigger," Sam says, crossing his arms. "A lot bigger."

Stark nods. "And here...is the projection of the next one based on the increases we've already seen in the past five." The wave washes well over the east coast, over New York City.

"What Tony and I have been able to determine," says Banner, "is that it appears to be some kind of supersonic wave at a vibration level too high for the average human ear to detect. We still don't know where it's coming from or what it does."

"Dogs can hear higher-pitched sounds than humans," says Natasha. "So can cats, mice, birds, bats, whales...any number of other kinds of animals. You think this is meant to send them into some kind of frenzy?"

"We exposed a couple of mice to it, and they didn't respond in any way outside of normal parameters," Banner says with a shrug.

"So this is still something we know nothing about and it's coming our way," Steve says, folding his arms. "What's our best option at this point?"

"Start carrying earplugs?" Stark says with a shrug of his own, lifting both hands. "Bruce and I just wanted everyone on the same page, because when this thing hits, whatever it does, we better be ready for it. We've predicted it'll happen sometime between ten and thirteen days from now."

"But it could be sooner, or later," says Banner. "It hasn't operated on a consistent enough timetable to make a more specific prediction."

You rub your temples. "Hydra," you say slowly, "was working on -- during the last few years, so I wasn't very -- I didn't have a lot of access. They were working on implanting trigger suggestions that didn't require a verbal cue. So anything from ... visual field stuff, to -- maybe this." Each of the words feels like spitting out a pebble that doesn't want to leave your mouth and bounces uncomfortably off your teeth.

"So we could suddenly have a wealth of sleeper agents on our hands," says Natasha dryly. "Wonderful." She sighs. "I'll put a call out to some people I know."

"You have people for this?" Stark asks. "Wait, of course you have people for this."

"Behavioral analysis is a legitimate field of science," Natasha answers. "Anyone who doesn't think that a significant portion of their life is being monitored is living in the past." She glances at you and Steve. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"I think I figured that one out by now," Steve replies, his tone just as dry as Natasha's had been. "I'd have to be pretty blind or pretty stupid or both not to realize it." You think of all the bugs that S.H.I.E.L.D. had on his old apartment. Of young women taking pictures of him on the street. More simply, of credit card transaction logs, of cable companies recording which TV shows are watched by who.

"Like I said." Stark folds his arms across his chest. "Ten to thirteen days. Keep your eyes open, be ready. Barnes, anything else to contribute?"

"They won't know it," you say abruptly. "Whoever they are, they'll have no idea what they are. They'd give themselves away if they did." Weapons that know they are weapons always do. It's in the tread of their step, the weight of their breaths. Whoever they are, you feel sorry for them. At least you knew you were a weapon. Maybe it's easier that way - to know you are a weapon, but not a person.

Natasha sighs, already getting her phone out. "This is going to be fun," she says. You can see how much she hates situations like this, where she doesn't have enough clues to put together any kind of meaningful picture out of the puzzle. She likes being one step ahead of everyone else.

"Great talk," says Stark, clapping his hands. "Cap, Falcon, sorry to interrupt your date - wait a second, Cap, are you BFF-cheating on the one-armed wonder over there with Wilson? This is too good."

"Steve's allowed to have more than one friend," you answer. "Just because you aren't one of them doesn't mean they don't exist. We're not like unicorns."

"Ouch," says Stark, "I'm hurt, Barnes. First you tell me you killed my parents, now this gently simmering animosity between Rogers and I isn't really friendship? I had such high hopes. We were going to go pick out drapes together."

Steve honest-to-god rolls his eyes. "I just want all of us to be ready for this," he says. "And I agree with Natasha, the less we know about this the harder it's going to be. So if anything comes up, Tony, Dr. Banner, please let us know." He pauses. "You may have been joking about the earplugs, but I think that might actually be worthwhile."

"Only if one of us is secretly a Hydra sleeper agent," says Barton. "Which I really hope isn't true, because I am so goddamn tired of mind control being the weapon of choice."

"Yeah," you agree, and he gives you a significant look that manages to convey both acknowledgement and also that he still wants to get you on a shooting range and see what you can do.

"Yeah, I think we can all agree on that," says Stark, sweeping the screen off to the side. He glances at Bruce. "What do I say now, Avengers dismissed?"

"Does it count as the Avengers without Thor?" Barton asks. Natasha gives him a dirty look and he raises both hands. "I'm just saying. Like, do Barnes and Wilson together make up one Thor equivalent? Or should we be calling ourselves something different?"

"Avengers dismissed," Steve says pointedly, and everyone turns to look at him and then everyone sort of simultaneously disperses. You go to follow Steve and Sam, but Natasha catches your sleeve.

"What you said back there," she says, her voice quiet but urgent. "Is that really all you know about it? You don't have anything else that might help?" Anything you might not want to say in front of them, is what she means. Anything you might not want Steve to know.

You shake your head. "By the time that kind of stuff was going on, they were keeping me in deep freeze 95% of the time and wiping me after every mission," you say. "All I remember is flashes. I said everything I know in there."

She gives you a long hard look and then her posture shifts a little. "How are you?" she asks.

"I'm fine," you say, and at the quirk of her mouth, "Jesus. I greet every day with a smile and renewed hope, is that what you want to hear?"

"You and Clint should really get together sometime," she replies. "His number's in your phone. You guys could talk about all the things you have in common. Liking pizza, shooting things from far away, being forced to hurt people you care about while under the influence of brainwashing. I bet it would be a good time."

You glance at Barton, who is standing by the elevator waiting for the two of you with a curious but guarded expression. "Uh huh. Everyone keeps telling me I need to talk about it," you say.

"You have to let it out somehow," Natasha says. "Maybe not by talking, but somehow, because otherwise it will poison everything in your life, and it'll do it so insidiously that you think it's just normal, and that it's your fault."

You open your mouth to answer - everyone also keeps telling you it's not your fault, which is totally unhelpful, but then Steve's head pokes out of the elevator, and he says, "Buck, you coming?"

"Yeah, sorry," you say, and, offhandedly, "Thanks, Natalia." You can't see her once you're in the elevator, but you think you know the expression on her face anyway - that careful blankness, slightly marred, like a painting where someone's deliberately smeared a brushstroke.


	9. the anvil

_9\. the anvil_

"How'd you get here?" Sam asks curiously, when you're all down on the ground floor again. "We got a taxi, we figured that it'd be fastest." He glances at Steve. "Subway might have been just as quick, at the rate that damn cab went, though."

"He got ahold of me first," you say. "So I took a car over." You shrug, glancing between them. "You two still need to head back to wherever?"

Sam glances at his watch. "Technically I don't get off the clock for another hour and a half, so probably, yeah," he says. "They're about to get real tired of me real fast if I just start ducking out halfway through the day all the time. You guys want to come along? I could give you a tour of the place. A really bad tour, 'cause I don't know it very well yet, but a tour."

"You didn't offer a tour when it was just me coming," Steve says, smiling lopsidedly. "What do you think, Bucky? You want to go visit Sam's work?"

"Am I you two's kid now?" you ask, raising your eyebrows. "I know there have been a lot of advancements in technology since the 1940s, but that was one I wasn't aware of. Which parent do you think I get the metal arm from?"

Sam laughs. "Yeah, that did come out a little bit Kindergarten Cop, Steve," he says. "But the invitation stands."

You glance between them. You can feel this sense of hopeful expectation, but you also feel like -- you've been out a lot the past couple of days, and either you can go visit the V.A. and see all the other dead-eyed, sad people and wonder if you're doing better or worse than them, or you could go home and not look at anybody for a while, and maybe work on trying to figure out anything useful about the signal that's going to hit New York in the next ten days. "I'm kinda tired," you say. An easy excuse. "I didn't sleep so well last night." Moderately true, though Steve would know you had slept no worse than usual. "But thank you. Rain check, sometime soon."

"Okay," Sam says. "I understand that, believe me. Well, good to see you, man. I'll see you again soon. Hopefully not 'cause a bunch of Hydra agents just came out of nowhere, but you know, comes with the territory."

You take the train back by yourself, because Steve was in the middle of something with Sam. A girl wearing wine-colored lipstick and a black coat smiles at you. You smile back. Something you would have done before. Feels easier, almost good. She doesn't know. Doesn't know any of it.

You get off the train and wait on a busy street corner, caught in the rush of people coming home from work. A camera flash goes off, and you look sharply in its direction. An older man is taking a photo with his phone pointed in your direction, but you look behind yourself and see that you're framed almost perfectly in one of those quintessential New York city street scenes and -- he can't know you, he's not even looking at you, really.

You stop by the coffee shop and the girl behind the counter, her nails fire engine red this time, says, "Hey! Steve's friend. We haven't seen you guys much lately."

"Yeah," you say. "We make it at home a lot now. Don't know why."

She pouts a little. "I hope he didn't get tired of us," she says. "Large Americano, extra hot, right? What was the name? James?"

You can't remember telling her that, but you nod slowly. "Tell Steve we miss him," she says as she rings you up. "Seriously, he was like everyone's favorite customer."

"I'm sure he was," you answer dryly, handing her a twenty and dumping most of the change into the tip jar when she hands it back.

"Not just because he's cute," she replies, mock-defensively. Cute is simultaneously a total misnomer and a hilarious understatement when referring to Steve, you think, and you wonder if she's implying anything about your relationship with Steve, or if it's just one of those bland statements people make just to make conversation. Cute is the least anyone could say about Steve, really.

You take your Americano, so hot that it singes the roof of your mouth, back upstairs. It sits untouched on the coffee table as you fall asleep on the couch, as if you've somehow prophesied your own exhaustion, making it come true by the act of merely voicing a simple lie.

++

You don't remember getting up and moving to the bedroom, but you wake up in the middle of the night with Steve's breath hot on your cheek. You sit up abruptly, your heart hammering, and he blinks awake with a small inhale.

"How'd I get here?" you ask him insistently.

He touches you, his palm against the center of your chest. "I carried you," he says sleepily. "You were dead to the world."

You never sleep that deeply, even when exhausted. You shouldn't be sleeping that deeply. "Hey," says Steve, drawing you back down, his hands wrapped around your biceps, pulling you inexorably. "It's okay. You're safe."

Nobody is ever safe, you think. He looks at you once you're lying down again, brushing stray hair away from your face. His thumb drags along your lower lip, then down to the cleft in your chin, where it rests. "What're you doing?" you ask him.

"Handsome," he says, his voice still muzzy. "You still look so young, y'know?"

"So do you," you say. Technically you are both still young. You may have been more or less alive for decades but your bodies themselves are still in their early thirties.

"Mm, I'm old, though," Steve says. "I feel old inside. Don't you? Old and young at the same time?"

"Mostly old," you reply after a moment. Looking at you from this close is making him go a little cross-eyed, a funny look on his face that makes you chuckle. He probably doesn't know what you're laughing about but it makes him smile too, and after a moment or two he leans in to kiss you.

He presses his tongue into your mouth, his hand sliding into your hair, and you close your eyes again, letting him hook a leg over yours and pull you closer. "I wanted to do that forever," he says, his voice still holding that sleepy burr, but now also the edge of something more, something hotter. "I always thought I'd lose you to some girl, you know. But I was okay with it, as long as we'd still be friends."

"I always thought I'd lose you to pneumonia," you reply. "Or asthma, or anemia." He rolls half on top of you, sliding his hand heavily down your side until he's cupping your ass, pulling your hips tight against his. You groan. "You know how fucked-up that feeling was?" you whisper, your lips grazing against his as you speak. "You were the person I loved most in the whole goddamn world, and thinking that I was gonna know you for maybe half my life if I was lucky -- it was a fuckin' relief when I was going to war, because I was so selfish I thought everything would be okay if I just died first."

"You were wrong," Steve replies, the vibration of his words buzzing against your skin. "Everything wasn't okay."

"Yeah," you agree. "I kind of get that impression."

"I didn't die," Steve says. "And neither did you. So it's okay now." He still sounds faintly sleep-drunk - half sleep and half horniness now, probably - but also very certain of what he's saying, and you can't find it in you to disagree with him.

He rolls his hips against yours in a slow, dirty motion, and pulls back to look at you more clearly. "Say it again," he says. "What you said before. Is it still true?"

It only takes you a second to figure out what he's referring to. "You were the person I loved most in the whole world," you say, leaning up to catch his lower lip between your teeth. "Of course it's still true, you dipshit."

He reaches for the bedside table, finds the lube by touch. He fucks you slow, until all you can say is his name, and then you can't say anything at all. He doesn't ask to do it the other way around. Everything is okay now. Everything is okay.

++

"Identify the shapes and colors," says a man sitting across the table from you. He pushes three small objects toward you. You blink at him, and reach up with one sluggish hand to wipe sleep away from your eyes. "Identify the shapes and colors," he repeats.

Abruptly - pain. There are electrodes attached to your right arm. Your left arm -- you choke down a shout. Your throat goes dry. "Identify the shapes and colors," the man repeats, and shocks you again.

"It's -- red cube," you say. "Yellow, uh, pyramid. Blue sphere."

The man nods and writes something down on his yellow pad of paper. He takes the shapes away and replaces them with a simple picture and a short sentence underneath it. "Read the sentence, aloud," he says.

You stare at him, and he shocks you again. "Fuck you," you say, "Where am I?" and this time the shock is longer and more intense. It leaves you sweating and gritting your teeth. "The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog," you say, reading the sentence.

"Identify yourself," the man says next.

You -- your name is -- your name is -- "I don't --" A shock. "I don't know. I don't know my name."

"Identify yourself," he repeats.

You whip your head around, jerking your hands against the restraints. Even the left one doesn't budge. You were in the snow, and -- a red blot on the ground, so dark it was almost black, and -- a bone saw -- you were awake. Jesus christ, you were awake, you were awake. "I don't know," you sob. "I don't know."

You wake in a cold sweat. It's later in the morning. Steve isn't in bed. _Fuck_ , you think. That was an early one. That must have been not long after. You shake out your left shoulder, rotating your arm and curling your fingers one by one. You get up and go straight into the bathroom, turning on the shower.

"Hey," Steve says, peering around the doorframe. "Good morning."

You turn your head a little, your hair hanging down like a curtain in front of your face, but don't say anything, rotating your arm again. "Buck?" Steve asks. "You okay?"

You exhale, and he steps in, reaching out cautiously to touch you. You flinch a little despite the fact that you don't want to flinch away from him of all people, and he pulls his hand away from your back as if he's been burnt. "Sorry," you say, your voice raspy.

You get into the shower and turn to look at him, pushing your hair out of your face. He looks confused and slightly wounded, but he pulls his shirt over his head and steps out of his sweats and climbs in with you. God bless Steven Rogers for refusing to back down from a fight. "Are you okay?" he repeats, ducking his head and looking you right in the eyes.

"I'm okay," you say. You're repeating the words more than anything, just aping what he said, but it's easier than trying to come up with something else to say.

"Was it another dream?" he asks.

You nod. "You want to tell me what it was about this time?" he asks.

"It was -- repetition. It must have been early," you say, unwillingly. "It was conditioning. They were teaching me to take orders without question. They would ask me to do something and if I hesitated or said no, they'd shock me. Gradually more and more if I kept disobeying."

Steve tilts his head and you continue, "It was -- I know it was early because I still knew what I was going through was fucked up. And -- I kept flashing back to them -- taking my arm."

Steve shakes his head. "You remember that?" he asks. "You were -- you were awake?"

You just nod grimly, rotating your shoulder again. Thinking of the white snow and the blood all over it. Mercifully you don't have a memory of what your mangled arm looked like, not really. It doesn't bother you most of the time. You think about that, about the fact that you've come to accept the hunk of metal they put on you as being part of you instead. You don't even really remember your real arm. Sometimes you have two flesh hands in your memory but that's about the extent of it.

Steve has gone a little white. He slicks wet hair back out of your face and reaches out to carefully touch your shoulder where the scarring begins, and then slides his fingers along your arm, down the bicep, to the elbow, and then down to your wrist. "Is it okay, if I touch it?" he asks.

"Yeah," you say. He lifts your hand up and presses his lips to your knuckles. "You were awake for yours, too."

"That was more of a one-time thing," he says. "I don't know if it really compares."

"Me either, I guess," you reply. Your whole body feels like a lead weight that is slowly sinking into the ground. You think the shower is hot, but you can't really tell. You're just sort of drifting.

"Come back to me," Steve says gently, and you do, a little, homing in on points where he's touching you. "That's good. You were always good at doing that."

"The way I remember it," you say, "It was more of me chasing after you when you ran off, but that's sweet of you to say. The ladies must love a charmer like you. You've really got a way with words."

"You know," says Steve, "They don't, they really don't."

You smile at him. You think that's not really true anymore. The girl at the coffee shop said he was their favorite customer. Women look at him all the time now.

He puts his arms around you, and you don't resist. You let him hold you until your arm stops hurting and the memory stops feeling so fresh and raw. His phone is ringing when the two of you get out of the shower.

"You might want to get online," says Natasha to him. He opens the laptop and immediately you see several Google notifications for your name.

 _Could Captain America's Best Friend Be Alive?_ asks a headline, and your heart rate skyrockets. You go very cold all over and resist the urge to put your head between your knees. Steve clicks on the article, his hand shaking a little, and you see several photos of him walking, you next to him. Your face is obscured or unclear in all of them, and the metal hand is wedged firmly into your pocket. You could be anyone. But somehow someone put it together. There's a shot of the two of you in the grocery store. Steve is laughing, and you have your back to the camera. Those two women.

"Pepper already knows," Natasha says. "She's on top of this. But the two of you might want to start thinking about how you plan on announcing James's miraculous resurrection story to the public."

After she hangs up, Steve goes through all the articles, one by one. Your face is not fully visible in any photos, and most of them are just repeats of the ones from the first article. "I'm sorry," he says immediately. "I should have thought about this. People take pictures of me all the time. I don't even notice it anymore."

"It's all right," you say, even though you can't really catch your breath. "It was bound to happen, you know. I can't stay invisible forever." You scroll down through another article. "You couldn't have done anything about it."

"I guess not," Steve admits. "You can't see your face in any of them, at least."

"I know," you reply, and he gives you a surprised glance. "You may not notice people taking pictures, but I do." You sigh, rubbing your towel over your head. "I wasn't supposed to have pictures taken of me. I got kind of used to avoiding it, and it seems like it's still useful."

"I'm sure Pepper can handle this," Steve says. "Some of the stuff Tony has done, I wouldn't have honestly ever thought there was a good way to spin it. She has a lot of practice handling PR disasters." He immediately looks chagrinned that he said the word 'disasters.' "I mean...difficult situations."

"Steve, pal," you say, leaning back against the couch and putting your hands over your eyes. "I don't think you could have chosen a more accurate word. I am a disaster."

"I think I am too," says Steve ruefully.

You laugh, eyes still covered. "And they say opposites attract."

++

You don't leave the house for two days after that, almost three. Sam comes by and he and Steve hang out and talk about the V.A. and Sam's job and Sam's parents, and they leave and go out to grab dinner. Steve brings you back a container of carefully-packaged food, and you thank him and go back to trying not to drown in the sea of static inside your head.

You sit on the opposite end of the couch from Steve while he and Sam talk, and smile a bland, inoffensive smile. Occasionally you laugh when Steve laughs. Neither of them asks you any questions, so, thankfully, you don't have a reason to say anything.

You know it's wrong. But you want to be a ghost. You want to stay dead. You don't want to have to deal with being a traitor, a murderer, or worse, being a hero, a captive, someone worthy of pity and commendation. You don't want anyone to know about you except the people who already do.

At the end of the third night, Steve sighs and turns off the television and just looks at you. "If there's something I can do to help," he says quietly, "I really hope you'll tell me."

You shrug. Your voice is rusty when you say, "It just comes with the territory."

"When Fury was showing me Project Insight, telling me what it was designed to do," Steve says, "he said to me something about our generation, the people who fought in the war. You know they call us the Greatest Generation now, but he said, we did some nasty stuff to win the war. And he was right, I told him that. I don't feel comfortable with it, and I don't think I ever will. But it doesn't stop people from calling me a hero. They forgive me for it even if I don't forgive myself, I guess."

You laugh. It sounds like gears grinding against each other. "I don't want to be a hero either," you say. "I don't want people to know who I am."

"People already know who you are, Buck," says Steve very gently.

You look at him and you think _shit, this is it. End of the line_. You are quiet for a silence that stretches on into uncomfortable, and then you finally say, "Steve, they don't know who I am. They know who you think I was."

Steve gets that wrinkle between his eyes again, and his mouth turns down at the corners. "What do you mean?" he asks. "I've known you since I was five, Bucky. I've known you my entire life."

"You ever stop to wonder why I was friends with you?" you ask. "I mean, you must have, I was -- smart, I was popular, girls liked me. You must have thought you came out on the winning side of that one, huh? But it wasn't that way at all, Steve. You didn't get lucky because I suddenly decided to be your friend, I got lucky because I met somebody who had everything inside that I never did."

You look at him just for a moment, almost accidentally. His eyes are searching your face, and you look away again before he can make eye contact. You laugh another creaky laugh.

"I was selfish," you say. "You had this light shining inside of you, and I wanted to keep it all for myself. I was like a moth circling around a flame, Steve. I couldn't let that go, once I saw it. You did good without even trying, like it wasn’t a choice at all, and I always, always wanted to know what that was like.”

"Stop, Buck --" says Steve. "You took care of me when I was sick. For christ's sakes, you went hungry for almost a week so I could have medicine. You saved my stupid ass from all those fights I got into, and you didn't have to do any of that."

"I was glad," you say sharply. "I was glad that girls never looked at you. Every day I thought to myself that if you ever figured me out, what a lousy piece of shit I really was, you'd find somebody better, somebody as good as you. And when I saw you, after -- after Zola? I knew right then that nothing was ever going to be the same. I knew you finally got what you deserved, and me -- I got what I deserved too." You laugh. "I got what I fucking deserved, too."

You realize that you've started crying, and you scrub the back of your right hand across your face. "That night in the bar. You were talking about the serum, and I knew right then, maybe earlier, even, what they did to me. But it didn't make me better. I didn't -- become like you. I was the same as I had ever been, except now I didn't even have you to myself anymore, because everybody could see how good you were."

You look at your hands resting on your knees. Steve is silent. You laugh, you laugh. "It wouldn't have worked on someone like you," you say. "You wouldn't have ever been the Winter Soldier. But with me they got just what they needed."

Steve's jaw is firm, but his eyes are wet. Silence stretches between the two of you, a long thin line being pulled at both ends, like your lives.

You look back at him again, though you can't hardly stand yourself, your vision blurry from the tears clouding your eyes. "I used to ask for you," you say. "Every time they woke me up, in the beginning."

He looks like he's afraid to say anything at all, but after a few more moments, he works his jaw and finally speaks. "Whatever ideas about me you had built up in your head," he says,” none of it changes the fact that I loved you then and I do now. Just because you think you're a bad person doesn't mean everyone else will too, Buck."

"You sure know how to inspire confidence, Cap," you say, and then you do put your head between your knees. Your whole body is shaking, but your hands, where you are clutching your ankles, are as steady as they have ever been. Steve lets you stay there for a couple of minutes and then he pulls you up, shifting you so you're lying half in his lap. He is quiet, and he strokes your hair. You stop crying and shaking, eventually.

"I shouldn't have said that," you say miserably. "I shouldn't have said any of it."

"Bucky, I've been asking you to talk to me all this time," Steve says. "I wasn't expecting it to be -- happy, or nice. I'd rather have you tell me about the bad along with the good than not tell me anything at all."

He sighs, smoothing your hair back from your forehead. You look up at him, and he just smiles a little, though it’s not a real smile. It’s the same sort of smile he used to wear when he was sick, when the fever finally broke. When the immediate danger was gone, but the pain persisted. "It's all right, Buck," he says. "It's all right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky remembers being tortured with electricity during a programming session.


	10. tower

_10\. tower_

You spend most of the next day feeling almost hungover, a feeling you haven't experienced in many years but remember with stunningly unpleasant clarity, and avoiding Steve. Not because of him, but because of yourself, as usual. You still haven't told him the worst of it, and you know it. You're afraid if you see him it'll all just come pouring out like guts from a wound.

You don't go out that day either, and you think you won't go out the next, but it turns out you don't have a choice. You are in your bedroom, lying curled on your side in the bed you haven't slept in for months, half-asleep. Steve's phone rings, and you hear him in the living room picking it up immediately. You regret briefly being too far away to hear what the other person is saying, but you hear Steve say, "Yes, I understand. We'll be there right away," and he comes into the doorway of your room.

"There's been an attack in Manhattan," he says. You sit up, and he says, "Will you come with me?"

You think of Stark saying he'd like you having his back, and you think of everyone else on that team who heals slower and is more vulnerable than you. You nod, getting out of bed and pulling on a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a jacket. "Let's go," you say.

You take the motorcycle across the bridge, hanging onto Steve, though it's a less opportune fit than you'd like with the shield strapped to his back. You can see a plume of smoke from somewhere in the mess of buildings, visible from far away. Your mind begins filling in the details immediately, extrapolating from the size and color of the smoke.

Steve takes the two of you to the tower first. "Stark and Barton are on the scene already," Natasha says. "Banner is staying here until further notice. He prefers to be our last resort, I'm sure you can understand. Wilson's waiting for you upstairs. I figured we'd go in pairs, you and Wilson, and I'll go with Barnes."

Steve shakes his head. "Buck and I go together," he says. "We work as a team. You go with Sam. We'll follow up."

Natasha gives you a sharp look and sighs, shaking her head. "Whatever," she says. "I don't have time to argue with you. Go upstairs, get suited up. Banner will give you the location." She whirls and goes in the opposite direction, pressing an earpiece in to radio Sam.

Steve goes to the elevator and jabs the button. "Hi JARVIS," you say, once you're inside. "Does this thing go any faster?"

"Certainly, sir," JARVIS says, and suddenly you're whooshing upward about twice as fast as you were before, which makes you feel woozy but has the desired effect of also getting you to the desired floor about twice as fast. Banner is waiting for you when you step out; his general affect is one you might describe as "frazzled," though it's all subtle touches - hair slightly awry, shirt hastily tucked in.

"Good, good, you're here," he says. "Steve, I know your uniform was -- kind of destroyed, but we have -- some spares, sort of. Tony likes to make things."

He shows you first to a cabinet full of tactical gear not dissimilar to what STRIKE used to wear, all that same matte black, which suits you fine but seems to discomfit Steve a little. "People will still know who you are," you say dryly to Steve, banging your metal fist lightly against his shield.  

You grab some of it for yourself -- was it just luck, or did Stark know your shoe size? -- and find a pair of scissors so you can cut the left arm off the jacket. You test the range of motion when you're in it and then turn back to Banner. "Weapons?"

Banner opens up the next cabinet, and the sight of what's inside gives you a sense of cold calm in a way that even tactical gear never could. Steve stands back while you arm yourself. He should really have at least one gun, you think, but he just folds his arms and waits. He looks surprisingly good in the tactical black. Maybe it's only surprising because you've never seen him dressed that way before.

Banner hands you both earpieces, and you put yours in and immediately hear chatter from Stark, who appears to be narrating his internal monologue. "Is there a way to switch channels?" you ask, hand over the mic, and Banner snorts.

"Was that Barnes?" Natasha asks, her voice tinny and far-away.

"Yes," says Steve. "We're on our way."

"Good to have you, Cap," says Stark ebulliently. "Be careful when you get down here, it's a little bit, uh, the street's kind of on fire."

Steve shoots a glance at you, and Banner shakes his head. As one unit, you and Steve turn and walk back to the elevator. JARVIS takes you down so fast you feel like your stomach is about to drop out your ass, and when you get on the back of Steve's motorcycle, he drives so fast you feel like you've left it behind entirely.

"Someone tell me the situation here," Steve says. You spot Falcon first, darting around the building that's on fire, and then Iron Man as he comes bursting out of a window in a fantastical hail of broken glass.

"It was sleeper agents," Barton says, slightly breathless. "Like you said, Barnes. The signal came and then about twenty minutes after it did the building was on fire. We don't know how many are still in there."

"There were roughly two hundred and fifty people in the building today according to the front desk records," Natasha says. "So far we've gotten about two hundred of them out. The other fifty are still inside, and some of them are trying to kill us."

Steve glances back at you. "I'm across the street," says Barton. You see an arrow whiz between the buildings. "These guys are fast," he continues. "Not as fast as you, Cap, but -- they're a pain in the ass, frankly."

"I want us focused on evacuating civilians until the building is clear," Steve says. His tone of voice is familiar. "Iron Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, you have the top floors. Widow, Bucky, and I will work on the lower ones." He turns back to you.

"You can call me Winter Soldier," you say dryly. "Given the circumstances it sounds a little bit more appropriate."

Steve doesn't really respond to that. "Stay on my six," he says, and then, when you nod at him and give him a little salute, the two of you start into the building.

Inside, the air in the building is thick, and you can hear the sounds of people shouting and screaming immediately. You draw a gun and rotate, covering Steve's six. "I'm coming down with a couple of civilians," says Natasha in your ear. "Rogers, Barnes, there are still some more on floor 28, pinned down by one of the hostiles."

You glance forward and Steve nods at you, and the two of you head for the stairwells. "We'll go up to where she is and work from there down," Steve says, and you nod the affirmative, following him as he starts up. The two of you work as efficiently as a team as you ever have, clearing the stairwell in a time that only you could ever possibly manage. When you get to the twenty-eighth floor, the smoke is thicker up there.

You crouch slightly, moving out of the stairwell behind Steve, who is holding his shield at the ready. "Widow," he says softly into his earpiece. "I need the location on those civilians."

"Northeast corner of the floor," Natasha replies immediately. "They're pinned down behind a barricade of overturned desks. I told them not to move until help came for them."

"Copy that," Steve answers. He turns and motions to you. Follow him, clear each office as you pass. You nod and he starts along, shield held in front of him. You keep the pistol at the ready. Up here it's somewhat quieter - or maybe it's just that it's quieter in your head. Your body knows just what to do; you've been through situations that are applicably similar so many times that it's just routine.

The offices are all empty. Steve signals to you to hold once the conference room in the northeast corner comes into view. You see the barricade of desks but with Steve in front of you, you can't immediately spot the hostile. Unless the hostile has abandoned this situation, you can calculate the angle that would give the most tactical advantage, but you have no visual.

Steve gestures for you and you come up alongside him. You follow his sightline and see where the hostile must have taken shelter, in an office directly across the hall from the conference room. You make eye contact with Steve and you can guess what he's thinking; the second either of you says anything to the hostages, the hostile will know you're in play, and then there's a chance that whatever other hostiles remain will also know.

Steve starts to creep forward, and you remain behind him. He holds the shield so it is covering you both from gunfire. You have almost reached the conference room when your earpiece crackles to life. "Barton, I could use some help up here," Stark says, and as soon as he says it, a hail of bullets comes from behind the desk in the office.

Steve whirls into action immediately, moving so that the shield so that it deflects any bullets in danger of hitting you or any of the hostages. Shouts of terror come from behind the barricade of desks, and Steve moves toward them more quickly. You return fire and see a flash of motion as the hostile ducks, but not much more. Nothing that gives you an idea of what you're working with here.

You duck behind the desks with Steve and see three women and two men huddled there, terrified, covering their heads with their hands. One of the women shrieks and raises her hands in surrender when Steve appears, and then shakily lowers them again after she gets a better looks at him. "Captain America?" she asks.

"Yes ma'am," Steve says. "We're gonna get you out of here. I need you to do exactly as I say, all right? One at a time I'm going to lead you to cover, and you're going to wait there until you're all safe, and then we are going to go downstairs together, okay?"

She nods, and he continues, "Good. What's your name?"

"Denise," she says quietly.

"Denise," he replies. "I will keep you safe. I just need you to trust me. I'm going to keep you behind my shield. You're going to have to crouch down and move as fast as you can."

"Okay," says Denise. She looks at you, then, and back at Steve, before nodding.

"Cover us," Steve says to you. You salute him with two fingers, watch him take a breath, and then he and Denise are scurrying out from behind the desk barricade. You climb onto the top of it, and as the shooter begins to fire at them, you locate his approximate position and begin returning fire in that direction.

The shooting stops when Steve's gone, and you wonder for a moment if you've hit him - seems unlikely through the thick wood of the desks considering the weapon you're using. You lift your head and see Steve waiting to come back around the corner. For a moment you meet his eyes, and then he starts back toward you and the bullets fly toward him again.

He takes the hostages one by one, and the hostile has been well trained to hold position, but once all of the hostages are gone, he has nothing left of tactical value and you have predicted he will emerge. As Steve herds the hostages toward the stairwell, you turn to meet him. He's a middle-aged man in a business suit, his expression glazed, but his shots are accurate. You dodge the first four, and on the fifth you raise your gun before he can finish aiming and shoot him in the chest. He goes down like a bag of potatoes, slumping on the floor.

You pick Denise up so that you can carry her down the stairs. Her shoes are impractical for quick movement and her knees are weak from fear. She holds onto you and breathes heavily against your shoulder. You and Steve get them all the way down, and you put Denise gently on her feet and send her toward the barricade the police have set up outside.

She glances back at you as she goes into the waiting arms of officers and paramedics. There is mascara down her face, and her neat hairstyle is undone. She opens her mouth, and though she's too far away for you to hear her, you can read her lips as she says "thank you."

You nod, and turn, and you and Steve run back into the building.

By the time you and Steve get back up the stairwell, Natasha has radioed that floors 26 and 27 are clear. On 25 you find chaos, four men running from two young women in skirt suits. One of the men has been shot, just a graze to the arm, but his face is white and he's moving slowly, like he's in shock. He ought to be. Shock would be a normal reaction in this instance.

Steve gets them all into the stairwell and pulls the door closed behind them. Once the two sleeper agents realized that you and Steve were here, their tactics became a lot more calculated. They work as a unit, although you have to wonder if they've ever worked together before - if they even know each other at all. You turn your left side into their shots. Bullets ping off Steve's shield and, once, your arm.

One of them tosses her empty gun aside and, unwisely, engages you, leaping for your throat. You catch her midair and she wraps her legs around you, but she doesn't have the weight or leverage to pull you down. You smack her head against the wall and you raise your left hand, and behind you Steve shouts, "Bucky!" but you don't respond immediately. A hand grabs your wrist and you turn to look at him quizzically. "You don't have to!" says Steve urgently, and you look back at the woman, hanging from your grip unconscious.

"If we leave her here we don't know who she's going to be when she wakes up," you say.

"Then don't leave her," Steve says, turning to go after the other woman.

You throw the unconscious agent into a fireman's carry and go back to the stairwell. Steve is not far behind you, but he doesn't have the other woman. "She jumped out the window," he says grimly. "Falcon and Iron Man were too high to catch her in time."

He helps the man with the wounded arm down the stairs, applying pressure with one firm hand. The man doesn't say much of anything, but his face is expressively, exhaustedly grateful when Steve shouts for a paramedic. You aren't sure what to do with the unconscious agent. Two paramedics gesture you over to a stretcher, and you say, "This one's one of the hostiles -- you'll want to restrain her."

They look down at her and you know just what they're seeing, just an average young woman. "You'll want to restrain her," you repeat, and then you look back to see Steve sprinting into the building. You wait just long enough to see the paramedics strapping the woman down, and then you follow him.

The closer you get to the ground floor, the more complex the situation becomes, and the further from yourself you get. There are more hostiles in play, and fewer hostages, and all you see is angles, opportunities. Kill shots. The voices of Barton, Stark, Romanoff, and Wilson are in your ear but you pay little attention to them, because their positions are irrelevant to you and the Captain.

You smash a man's face into the corner of a desk. Once, twice. His hand is still scrabbling at your throat. Once more. "Bucky!" shouts a voice from nearby. "Bucky!" You smash the man's head once more for good measure. A little more pressure from your left hand and you could crack his skull, which would render him decisively no longer a threat. "Winter Soldier!" says the same voice, and you turn around, letting the man go. "Stand down," says Steve. "He's -- he's out."

You look down and the man isn't just out, he's clearly dead, his face a bloody mess. You don't say anything to Steve, just wipe your hand on the front of your shirt and follow him.

The impact of a larger caliber bullet catching you in the shoulder knocks you back for a moment as you enter the next room. "Cover yourself!" Steve shouts, and you dive behind a desk.

"Where the fuck did they get all these guns in an office building?" Barton shouts over the earpiece. Easy, you think. These people had been meticulously and unconsciously planning this for months, probably. Maybe even years. Every so often someone would send them a message, a letter, something with a trigger phrase. The guns probably weren't even brought in whole; they were probably brought in little by little, in pieces, and assembled here. Why buy weapons when you could just build them instead?

You sit up above the desk briefly, gauging the angle from which the shots are being fired. You need a gun with more stopping power, and the desk itself isn't going to last very long. You unhook your rifle from your back, and Steve half-crawls half-runs over to join you behind the desk, huddling up next to you. "You gonna tell me not to kill this one, too?" you ask, waiting for a break in the shooting.

"No," Steve says. "Please kill this one. As soon as possible."

Your hands are steady. It only takes the one shot; Steve comes up next to you, holding the shield to give you some cover, and it's all over.

"Nice shot, Barnes," Barton says appreciatively. "That was... bonerworthy."

"Hardly," you say in response. Briefly, like a gruesome flipbook, you think of others that were better, as you shoulder the rifle and stand up with Steve to finish clearing the floor.

"There shouldn't be many more," Natasha shouts over the earpiece; the distinctive sound of Iron Man's repulsors is in the background, which means he must have finished clearing the top levels and is now committing egregious property damage on the lower levels. "Shit -- Barnes, Rogers, get down here! We're pinned down and there's a group of them headed for the police barricade!"

Steve glances at you, and then glances out the window. You're still on the fourth floor. "You think?" you ask him.

"You don't?" he responds. He jumps out the window. Of course he jumps out the window.

You go after him, because you always do, and you don't break any bones by virtue of years of training on how to land and a hell of an enhanced skeletal structure, but it's a near thing and your knees fucking hurt from the impact; you stagger for a moment, as you follow him.

You come up at the rear of the group, which is moving like a well-trained unit should. The man watching that direction sees you almost immediately and starts shooting. Steve ducks, putting his shield in front of him, and you crouch behind him. The police are shooting from behind the barricade, but once they spot you, someone yells "Cease fire!" - which is less helpful than they probably think it is - and it all stops.

You glance around; there's no place for cover, really, between here and the barricade. You probably would have been better coming down and picking them off one by one from the safety of the building, but no, Steve had to jump out the window. "Cover me!" you shout, standing up and vaulting over him, and he throws his shield, which bounces off the head of the man facing you, sending him sprawling. You grab it and throw it back to him, and get your left arm around the neck of the nearest guy, kicking the gun out of his hands and taking him down before he has a chance to fire it.

Steve is in the fray then too, knocking the shield against a woman's head. She falls down with a bloody nose and a dazed expression, but she's still conscious enough to knee Steve in the crotch. His face twists but he gets her in a sleeper hold and keeps her there until she stops moving.

The group is splitting up now, and you go after one half, drawing a pistol. They breach the barricade and it's chaos, people scattering in all directions. You stand your ground and take a breath; before either of them can grab someone to use as a shield, you take them both down. One shot each to the head.

You turn around and Steve is wrestling with one of the two remaining men; the other one is stalking toward you, reloading his weapon, and suddenly someone grabs you from behind and you realize there was another one in the crowd. Another woman, with her arm around your neck.

Steve looks toward you and his eyes go wide, wild. He gets a foot on the chest of the guy he's fighting, and makes eye contact just long enough to ensure you know what's coming. He whips the shield to you through the air. You catch it in your left hand, and in one motion you smash it against the face of the woman with her arm around your neck, then throw it with as much force as you can muster, edgeways toward the most vulnerable part of the man about to shoot you.

It decapitates him cleanly, with an impressive spray of arterial blood. His body slumps slowly to the ground.

The crowd is very silent. "Holy shit," says Iron Man, landing nearby.  

"You said it," Barton agrees, coming out of the tower with a bedraggled Natasha behind him. Sam appears too, helping what must be the last of the civilians toward an ambulance.

You look around and suddenly you realize how many people are here. How uncovered you are. Police are dragging the woman who was strangling you away, handcuffing her, and as you meet their eyes you realize exactly how clearly they can see your face. Your arm.

You turn to look at Steve, who is picking up his shield. He has a little trickle of blood coming from his nose. "So, uh," says Iron Man, "meet at the tower to debrief?" and he doesn't have his faceplate up but you can imagine that he's just about as eager to get out of here as the rest of you are, especially considering now that S.H.I.E.L.D. no longer exists you are essentially a group of vigilantes.

Steve nods, and then he turns rapidly to go back toward where you parked the motorcycle. Normally you assume he'd be the one talking to the press, handling any inquiries. Now you wonder who's going to do that, if anyone. Maybe Pepper is already aware of the situation and has set her P.R. machine in motion.

"Clear the road," Steve says to the group of people standing near the bike. They all stare at him. "Clear the road, please," he repeats, and abruptly they all scatter. He hooks the shield, blood and all, back onto himself, and you climb onto the bike behind him, feeling almost dazed.

"Hey," he says, turning to look over his shoulder at you, and when you look up at him, "Hold on."

He drives almost as fast back to the tower as he did coming from it. Your heart rate hasn't even slowed fully by the time he parks - kind of haphazardly. He gets off the motorcycle and looks around, taking the shield off his back and leaning it against the front wheel.

You don't know what he's looking for, but you get off too, scanning the whole garage and finding nothing but a lot of fancy cars, a badly parked motorcycle, and, of course, Steve. "It's clear," you say to him.

"Yeah," he agrees. He grabs you by the hair and kisses you fiercely, wildly, pushing you back against the wall. You utter a surprised noise into his mouth and kiss him back just as hungrily, reaching for the zip of his tactical jacket. He smells like smoke and sweat. You yank his shirt up and run your hands along his chest, and he groans into your mouth, biting your lips.

He tries to just push your jacket up but it's got too many heavy solid things attached to it for him to do that, so he unzips it too, and you shoulder it off, where it falls to the ground with a thump. He rucks your t-shirt up all the way to your armpits and drags his nails along your chest, making goosebumps follow in their wake, making you cry out.

"Steve," you say, and he reaches for your pants, biting the corner of your jaw and then covering your mouth with his own again. He undoes your belt, button, zip, pushes your pants to your knees, and you struggle for a moment to kick them off over your boots. By the time you get your legs wrapped around him, he has his hands under your ass, holding you up, and he's practically fucking your mouth with his tongue.

Your dick rubs against the front of his pants, and you make a complaining noise, fumbling for them until he reaches between you and does it himself. He shoves his pants and underwear down around his knees and then he turns you around so that you're facing the wall.

You put your palms flat against it, panting, and for a minute he's silent too, except for his own heavy breathing. He must be just looking at you. You turn your head and as you do he's sucking two fingers into his mouth; you have to close your eyes for a second at the sight of his cheeks hollowing, his eyelashes fluttering. Your cock jerks and you rest your forehead against the wall.

He presses his fingers into you and it's not as easy as it usually is, but you push back into it with a moan, opening your eyes again and making brief eye contact with him. "Come on," you demand, "C'mon, Steve."

He works in and out until you're a little bit more relaxed, and you say, "Stop messing around," earning yourself a surprised, open-mouthed look. His cheeks are pink, there's sweat on his upper lip.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says, and you counter with, "I don't give a _fuck_ , come on and fuck me."

His pupils get wider and he closes his mouth. He grabs you with both hands on your hips and you brace yourself against the wall, leaning your forehead against your left bicep. When he pushes inside you it forces a high-pitched, breathless noise out of you, and he doesn't give you a lot of time to adjust before he starts fucking you.

It's not the most comfortable fuck you've had for sure, but it doesn't matter, because he's moving your hips just so, the friction of his dick edging away from pain with every stroke. You drag your hands against the wall, feeling your palms scrape against the concrete. " _Steve_ ," you choke out, "oh my god, _harder,_ " and he obliges you; his thighs slap audibly against your ass with every thrust.

This isn't any kind of floating-away-inside-your-head pleasure, that's for goddamn sure; you are exquisitely present in the moment, from the way his hands bruise your hips to the faint way that the hair on his legs chafes slightly against your upper thighs. Every time he fucks in, your mouth says "Ah!" or something similar, and you bang your head against the wall a couple of times with the force of his thrusts.

You come so hard that you almost fall down - it builds so fast and so ruthless that it takes you by surprise and you think that you might pass out. Steve feels you slump and grabs your hips harder, holding you in place while he pounds out his last few thrusts and then comes too.

He rests his face against your shoulderblade, panting. For a second you wonder if he's gonna want to talk about it, but he just steps back after making sure you're able to hold yourself up, removing his hands carefully. He pulls up his pants and zips them as you eye him blearily. "You okay?" he asks, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Yeah," you say, wiping yourself off and pulling your own pants back up, a lot less efficiently than you usually do. "That was fucking amazing."

Your hand is scraped up, and you laugh, showing it to Steve, who looks woeful. "It's fine," you say. "It'll be gone in a few hours, I'm fine." You pull your t-shirt down and bend down to reach your jacket. "How do I look?"

Steve looks at you, and then sighs, running his hands through his hair. "Like you've just had sex," he says.

"Well, help fix me then," you say, wiping your face. He comes closer and starts running his fingers through your hair, detangling it, and then he leans down to kiss you again. _Shit_ , you think, opening your mouth to him and leaning back against the wall, _I could go again._

But he pulls away, wiping his lips, even if he has gone pink all over once more. He could go again too, you think, feeling incredibly smug. He probably would, except -- "We need to get up there," Steve says. "They know how long it takes to get here, they're going to be wondering where we are."

"Tell them we went to Shake Shack or something," you say, handing him his shield, complete with drying arterial blood. He gives you a very disapproving look and starts to head for the elevator.

"The two of you seem to be having a very eventful day," says JARVIS pleasantly, once you're inside. All the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, until - "I've taken the liberty of removing that footage from the security queue and marked it for immediate deletion with no review necessary. In the future, may I suggest a more private location."

Steve looks like he's about to explode. "Thanks, JARVIS," you say.

"Certainly, sir," JARVIS replies. "The rest of the Avengers are waiting for you on floor forty-seven. Congratulations on a successful mission."

JARVIS, you think, is a true piece of quality technology.

Everyone is sitting around a big conference-style table when you get to the floor; Stark doesn't have the Iron Man suit on anymore but does have some grease and dirt on him, Banner still looks frazzled, and Sam, Natasha, and Barton all look a little worse for the wear as well, though nobody's visibly injured beyond a few cuts and scrapes. Pepper is there as well; she is, in direct contrast to the rest of you, pristine - she's even wearing white.

"I vote he stays on the team," Barton says, pointing at you. "Seriously. You too, Wilson. Both of you, definitely on the team."

"Were there any civilian casualties?" Steve asks immediately, sliding into a chair. You sit down next to him, trying not to be tender about your sore areas.

"None," says Pepper, scrolling on her iPad. "There were a few injuries, but none of them serious. Mostly minor bullet wounds."

"That's a much better track record than what we had before," says Natasha. She looks tired, you think; she's leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed up toward the ceiling.

"It is," Steve agrees, glancing over at you. "It's what we should be aiming for every time."

"What was the source of the signal this time?" Sam asks, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

"Somewhere in Sudan," says Banner. "As far west as you can go and still be in Africa. So now we know what it does, but unfortunately we don't know if it's going to happen again, if there are more of them, or where they might be."

"I mean, we can send Rhodey to Africa again," says Stark, "but he's a busy guy. Maybe we can ask Thor to have uh, what's his name, the all-seeing eye guy --"

"Heimdall," says Natasha.

"Right," Stark continues. "Maybe we can ask Thor to have him take a look for us."

"You think we should be asking Asgard for favors right now, when they're kind of in political turmoil?" Banner says, and you remind yourself to figure a little bit more of that out when you have a chance.

"No," Stark replies, pointing one finger. "I think we should ask Thor, who is our friend, for a favor." He pauses. "At least, he told me he was my friend. I guess I don't know about the rest of you."

"We're handling the press inquiries about the event as of now," Pepper says, gently interrupting. "There isn't a lot of news footage that appears to be usable, considering the size and distance of the police blockade. Any inquiries that any of you receive personally in the next few days, I suggest redirecting them to the Stark Industries legal department, especially if there are any questions that you feel uncomfortable or uninformed answering."

She looks at you. "I hate to say this, but I think we need to move our timetable forward significantly on addressing the issue of Sergeant Barnes's identity. I don't think we can afford anonymity much longer."

"Well, at least considering today's events they gotta know he's on our side now," says Stark. You smile wanly at him. "Scary, maybe, but definitely on our side."

"We'll talk about it," Steve says definitively. "I don't think now is the right time to do that, though."

"Perhaps not right after a firefight," Pepper agrees, smiling. "I'll have my office book a meeting. In the meantime, you're legally as in the clear as you can be, considering the group of friends you've chosen, and I would suggest keeping a low profile."

"I'm pretty good at that," you say. Steve sits beside you. They've seen you, you think. They know, they'll figure it out. Soon they'll be holding you up to the light, inspecting you like a little kid inspects a butterfly. You have to be careful with the butterflies. No matter how gently you touch them, every fingerprint on their wings brings them closer to death. Your mother told you that. Better to just let them be, she said.

"Pepper," says Sam, "has anyone ever told you that you might be Superwoman?"

Pepper laughs. "You would have to be, to deal with Tony Stark for as long as I have," she says. "I'm going to go start fielding phone calls now. If any of you needs anything from me, let me know."

"Marry her," says Sam to Stark, as soon as Pepper has left the room.

"Buddy, do you seriously think I haven't thought about that?" says Stark. "Hey, you guys want to get a pizza? I need a shower. So do you, Barnes, I think you got some guts on your shirt."

"Yes," says Barton. "Yes, I want a whole pizza. I want a whole pizza for myself."

++

You end up on the floor with the deck again, watching the sun go down, the remnants of smoke blown out into the clouds. Steve leans against you and you put your arm around his shoulders. You changed your shirt, but you haven't showered yet, and up this close both of you still smell faintly like sex.

Natasha, who did take a shower and is now wearing black jeans and a tank top, is sitting across from you, looking at you as she contemplatively chews a slice of pizza. "The two of you were good out there today," she says. "You do make a good team."

"Always did," says Steve. He sounds tired. He probably is tired. You're tired. You ruffle his hair.

"Have you thought," says Natasha slowly, "about what you're going to say to the public?"

"Yeah," you reply. "My thought is that it's probably best if I don't say anything at all, at first. I'll let Pepper handle that. It's what she's good at."

Natasha makes a 'huh' noise, finishing her slice of pizza. "That only works for so long, you know."

"Uh huh," you agree. "One day at a time, though. Isn't that what they say in therapy?"

"Alcoholics Anonymous," she replies dryly. "And you're not in therapy."

"Whatever," you say. Steve rests his face against your shoulder and you can feel his smile.

"The rest of you were good out there too," he says eventually, his voice slightly muffled but loud enough that everyone else will be able to hear it. "We do make a good team. All of us."

By the time you get back to Brooklyn, pretty much all you want to do is sleep, which seems like a doubly appropriate solution considering you also don't want to think about press conferences and newspapers and your face everywhere. You and Steve more or less both stagger to bed - about a third of the staggering is due to exhaustion, and two-thirds due to the fact that you are kissing each other and trying to pull each other's shirts off as you go.

"I really need a shower," Steve says, lying with your head pillowed on his shoulder, his right hand stroking along your left bicep. "So do you."

"It can wait until morning," you mutter. Sure, he smells, but you don't really mind. You tilt your head up and angle for a kiss. "I don't want to get up."  
"Me neither," Steve agrees, and you fall asleep trading kisses back and forth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit depictions of violence committed by the main character.


	11. la spedla

  _11._ _la spedla_

You dream of a mission. You're in the mountains. Snow. The cold slightly impedes the function of your arm, especially considering you are forced to wear a cumbersome jacket. You've been tracking your mark for a day and a half. He fled. Someone told him you were coming.

Who or why is irrelevant. He can only go so far. The human body has its limits, and he left in haste, ensuring he was not as well-prepared as you are. You find the cabin easily.

When you open the door, he looks up at you, an elderly man. He's unarmed. You feel a slight sense of disappointment that this is how it will end. He speaks to you in Russian: "Winter Soldier," he says. "Comrade." You are no one's comrade.

"They all say that you are a machine," he continues. You look at him curiously, his hands held out in front of him in a gesture of surrender. "They say there is no trace inside you of the man you were before. But that must be wrong, surely -- not even Hydra can erase all humanity! Please --"

His words are nonsensical. You shoot him in the forehead and turn to walk down the mountain again.

Strangely, it makes you feel peaceful when you wake up. The memory of yourself, trekking through all that unblemished whiteness. You were alone then, for a while. Before it was a risk leaving you out of cryo that long, when it was all fresh. You sigh, looking at the ceiling. You want to retrieve that feeling of peace, but you think that feeling of peace doesn't come along with being a person, it comes with the absence of it.

You look at Steve, frowning slightly in his sleep, and reach to smooth the line between his eyebrows with your thumb. He is whole and unmarred; he doesn't have any bruises left from yesterday, nor scrapes nor scratches.

When you glance at the clock it's almost time for Steve's alarm to go off anyway, so you just lie there and watch him breathe, and think about him instead of thinking about the dream, or anything else. His alarm goes off and he opens his eyes. He smiles when he sees you, reaching to turn it off. "Hi," he says.

"Hi," you say back.

He rubs his eyes, shifting. "I need coffee," he says. It's funny, because if alcohol can't affect either of you anymore then coffee certainly can't either, but apparently coffee has a stronger psychological hold. "Coffee and a long shower."

"I can put on a pot," you say, and he smiles again.

"That'd be nice." He sits up, stretching, silhouetted by the morning sun. "Then come get in the shower with me."

You snort and salute him, rolling out of bed. Your knees are still a little bit off from yesterday, and you have a slight hitch in your step for a moment. Getting old, you think wryly as you head to the kitchen.

You make the pot of coffee and pour a couple mugs, setting them aside where the light from the window catches the steam and it curls up into the air in a strange, beautiful pattern. Steve's already in the shower when you get to the bathroom. He's humming to himself, a song that sounds familiar to you but you can't quite place.

He blinks water off his lashes when you get in. "I had a dream," you say. "About a mission. It was in the mountains, in snow. It was kind of -- peaceful."

"Sounds nice," Steve says. You smile at him because you can tell he's still half-asleep, and he grins dopily back at you.

"I guess so, as far as those things go," you say.

"You remember that little village we came across?" Steve asks. "Like something out of a painting. Like a storybook or something. Of course, by the time we got there it was almost empty and half the buildings were burnt-out, but it was something I never thought I'd get to see in my life."

"I remember the baker," you answer. "And his daughter. Francoise. They brought us fresh bread. It was the best thing I'd tasted in months." You tilt your head.

"Yeah," Steve agrees. "I wonder if she's still alive. She'd be almost eighty."

You wonder if she would remember you, if she was still alive, just a bunch of tired soldiers passing through. "I think I saw a lot of Europe," you say. "But I didn't really see it, you know what I mean?"

Steve laughs. "I know exactly what you mean."

++

The meeting with Pepper isn't for a day and a half, but you cringe when you open up the laptop and see the number of Google alerts for your name. Steve's hand rests in the center of your back, steadying you. "If you need me to, I can look at it and then tell you what it says," he tells you.

"I'm gonna have to deal with it eventually," you reply grimly. The headlines are fairly predictable; like Pepper said, there weren't any cameras close enough to get a clear shot of you, but there are plenty of people who saw you. And then there's the fact that you match the description of the assailant who attacked Washington D.C., later speculated to be the legendary Winter Soldier, to a tee.

You laugh wildly at the use of the word 'legendary,' but Steve just looks grim. "Natasha called you a ghost story," he says. "The circle of people who knew about you was pretty small, I think, but obviously it's...expanded." And it's now considered legitimate enough that mainstream news outlets are picking up on it.

You look at a photo of yourself in 1943 juxtaposed with a blurry shot from yesterday. How did they even get there, you think, without being able to see your face? "It's gonna be okay," Steve says. "People are actually -- pretty respectful, you know."

"I know," you say. You've been out with Steve enough times to watch him get recognized pretty frequently, but people mostly leave him alone anyway. It's New York City, after all, there are famous people everywhere. You just can't reconcile yourself to the idea of having people take your photo in the grocery store. You don't want to sign autographs or shake hands.

"I would have loved this attention back in the day, wouldn't I," you say, to say something else.

Steve looks at you, and chews on his lip. "I don't know," he replies. "I guess you would know better than me, but -- you were friendly, sure, but I never got the impression that you were particularly fond of the spotlight." He pauses. "I could have been wrong."

"No," you sigh. "You're right." You never wanted to be famous, not past the age of six or seven, when you started to figure out what that really meant was that everybody scrutinized every last thing you did and made up opinions based on not knowing you at all.

"All of what you said the other day," Steve says, "it was almost -- it was kind of funny to me, because I remember how when we were growing up, you were always the smartest, handsomest guy on the block. Everything always came easy to you, you just seemed to know how to talk to people, how to get on their good sides. It seemed like you didn't even have to try."

You laugh. "I was trying," you say. "I was trying really goddamn hard, all the time." You turn your head, leaning back against the back of the couch, and look at him. "I guess I was doing better than I thought, if you really couldn't tell."

"I guess it wouldn't have mattered if I knew you were trying or not," Steve says. "The result was the same. Anyway, people liked you then and they'll like you now."

"Nice of you to say," you reply, "but I think you might be a little biased." People might like you, you think, it's just that you don't even want to give them the chance anymore. You don't want them to know you at all.

As you ride in one of the black Stark cars toward the tower, you think about the fact that maybe you will no longer be able to take the subway ever again. You still could, but will it be too much with all those people around, knowing that many of them will recognize your face?

You don't know. You used to hate Stark Tower and now it, at least, feels more normal to you. Just a building, fraught with none of the implications that it used to hold. At least not in the parts that are familiar.

Pepper is waiting for you and you go up to her office again. The windows are open and today the sky is cooperatively blue, though it's no longer that bright, unbreakable blue it was for most of autumn. Winter is starting to slowly leech the color out of it, turning it waterier and duller. It's still a nice view.

She has a representative from legal there again, and another man, who has a smile that is much too bright and sincere and probably works in the PR department. You sit down close enough to Steve that you can bump your leg against his, and settle your hands neatly in your lap.

"Thank you for coming," says Pepper graciously. "Obviously we have a little bit of experience handling this kind of thing - we dealt with all the press when Tony announced he was Iron Man, and we had some input on how Steve's reintroduction to society was handled as well. I don't know if you've seen some of those press clippings?"

You glance at Steve and nod, and he looks somewhat bashful. He shouldn't be; he gives a good interview, which he could have been coached extensively on, but you kind of doubt that. He’s always had a talent for speech-giving. "David took the liberty of coming up with a few options depending on how involved you want to be in this process," Pepper says, opening up a folder and sliding a few pieces of paper over to you.

"We've already gotten requests for comment, but nobody has spoken about it yet," she says. "The longer we wait, though, the more it looks like we have something to hide, which isn't what we want to project."

You look at the glossy pieces of paper, and then back up at her. "I don't want to do any interviews," you say. "I don't want to -- speak in front of the media."

She nods, pulling one of the papers back and putting it away. "I think a press release could be enough for now," says the PR guy - David - "But it is a good idea to talk to media eventually. Maybe not now, maybe in a couple of months. But the best person to tell your side of the story is you. Your voice is important. And it's possible that the longer you wait to comment, the harder the media will try to spin it, and we'll see more speculation."

"They can speculate all they want," you say, putting your hands back in your lap. Your voice is important, you think with a little amusement. For years and years your voice has been one of the least important things about you, if you even had one at all.

"Obviously we have to acknowledge the period before you were recovered," says David. "I think that we'll emphasize the fact that you were a prisoner of war. We don't need to directly mention any of the specifics, but it is important people know that what happened was against your will."

"Okay," you say. He's getting a lot wrong here - it wasn't that it was against your will, really. It was more that they carved the will right out of you. And you weren't recovered by anybody, not really. You went to Steve eventually and you did the rest yourself.

"It would be very valuable for your image as rehabilitated if you were voluntarily participating in therapy," David says.

"I'm not," you reply shortly, looking at Steve. "I don't want to." You don't say you don't need to, or that it's unnecessary, because those two are debatable. "Listen, if it's really important, we -- Steve has a friend who works for the V.A., I can go spend some time down there if it makes a difference."

"I think that would be advisable," David says, writing something down on a legal pad. "You're referring to Sam Wilson, correct?"

"Yes," says Steve.

"People are going to find out what I did anyway," you blurt. "The information's all been declassified. My file is harder to get ahold of, but it's out there." Thanks to Natasha.

"We'll address those issues as they come," David says. "For now I think it's important to shift the blame away from you and decisively onto Hydra. We'll include a serious request for privacy and respect -- for the most part that was successful when Captain Rogers was reintroduced in 2011." He glances at Steve, eyebrow raised, and Steve nods and shrugs a little.

It'll probably work better with you, you think. You're a lot scarier now than Steve ever was. "It's also worth suggesting," Pepper says, "that you might want to consider moving into the tower here until the media storm blows over. It's a lot easier to keep the media away here."

You look at Steve quizzically, and he sighs. "Tony has a floor for me," he tells you. "He's been after me to move in for a while."

You don't know. You like the apartment in Brooklyn. It's familiar. People are used to seeing you there. You like the exposed brick and the kitchen island and Steve's things living in the apartment. The haphazard bookshelves crammed full of all those books you ordered on Amazon. "We'll think about it," you say. You run a hand through your hair. "Draft the press release. Send it to me and I'll go over it. Do -- I guess do what you think is best."

"What about what you think's best?" Steve asks you.

"I don't want to do any of this," you reply, leaning back in the chair. "So I don't know that I'm the right person to ask."

After that, the guy from the PR department tells you you should cut your hair, and stop wearing all black - he doesn't really tell it to you straightforward, it's more of an elaborate attempt to lead you into making the decision yourself. It doesn't work; you just tell him, "I'm not cutting my hair," and give him a stare like you're looking at him from the other end of a rifle scope.

You can sense that Steve is probably looking inappropriately amused beside you, but when you look at him he is still stern-faced except for the twitching corner of his mouth. "Stark Industries is throwing a benefit gala at the end of the month," Pepper says, interrupting the awkward silence that follows your pronouncement. "Steve will be invited - all of the Avengers will be invited. You should think about attending that. It would be a good way to get out there in a more controlled environment."

"Sure," you say. "I'll think about it."

"Tony will be thrilled. We'll send you over a draft of the press release as soon as it's finalized," she says with a gracious smile. "Thank you for your time today, gentlemen."

"Thank you for yours," Steve counters. "I know you have a busy schedule, and I -- we both -- appreciate it." He shakes her hand as she comes from behind the desk.

"I can't imagine how strange this all must be for you," Pepper says gently as she turns to you. She lays a hand lightly on your right arm. "I think it's very brave of you. If it was me, I might have just run away and never stopped running."

"I don't know if brave is the right word," you say, "but thank you. And like Steve said, thank you for taking the time. Tony -- Stark Industries -- is awful lucky to have you around."

"Well," she replies modestly, but ducking her head slightly in a way that you can tell means she's flattered. "I do what I can."

You get the draft of the press release in a couple of hours. It's good. It's very tasteful. There's no fawning, no begging for the public's pity, and all the words are carefully chosen. You send it back with a couple of corrections and sit with your hands in your lap in front of the computer for a while after that, until Steve comes back from the grocery store.

"Tomorrow everyone's going to know who I am," you say to him.

He sets the bags down on the counter and immediately starts unloading them. Mechanically, you get up to go help, pulling out cans of soup, loaves of bread. "The cashier asked me why I was wearing all black yesterday," he says. "I guess I didn't look very -- patriotic, or heroic, or something. I said my uniform got ruined so that was just temporary. It was." He pauses. "Strange. Usually people don't ask me details like that. They just say thank you, or good job."

"Sorry about your uniform," you say, remembering the helicarrier.

"It's fine. Tony can make me a new one." He shrugs, pulling out a handle of bananas and hanging them on the hook by the fridge. He folds up the bags and puts them under the sink, and you watch his shoulders rise and fall as he breathes. "Whatever the consequences are," he says, turning and looking you in the eye, his chin slightly raised, "I don't care. I don't care what people think about you or me. I just wanted to say that."

The look on his face is so quintessentially Steve that you wish you could frame this moment. "Thank you," you say. "I mean it. Thank you."

You don't really know how to say what you really mean, because how do you thank somebody for being the stable point that you orbit around? How do you thank someone for being an anchor, something you could come back to?

"Thank you for coming back," he says.

++

You stay away from the computer for the next day or so. You and Steve watch movies, play card games, do things that don't involve being in public or engaging with the news media. It feels incredibly irresponsible, to just back away from it all like that, but you just don't want to know what people think about James Barnes coming back from the dead. Not yet.

You beat Steve four times at pinochle and he accuses you of cheating, and the ensuing wrestling match turns into the two of you kissing, your hand under Steve's shirt, as you grind your hips down against his on the couch. "Buck," he says, his mouth red when you pull away. "Don't stop, you feel amazing."

It does feel amazing, and you feel like you're thirteen again and you've just discovered what desire feels like, except at that age you were too damn pigheaded to put any kind of word to it, and by the time you figured it all out, you realized that you couldn't just do as you pleased, that there were rules to this too. "You make me feel like a horny teenager," you say to Steve, and he blushes crimson all the way down into his shirt collar.

"Yeah?" you ask him. "You had some teenage fantasies about me, too?" You roll your hips down against his. "Tell me."

"The summer you were sixteen you barely wore a shirt," Steve says, clearly too hard up for it to resist your order. "You have no idea how you looked to me - you were doing that part-time work at the grocery store, and you had more muscle on you than any of the other guys we went to school with, and every time I would look at you I'd think you were exactly how a - a boy was supposed to be, but I didn't know why it made me feel the way it did."

You remember hauling crates and crates, breaking them down behind the store and tossing them all into the garbage heap out back. You'd been pleased with the fact that you'd grown about four inches that year and Jenny Baker had called you handsome, even though she'd laughed and acted like it was a joke afterwards. You remember Steve because of course you do - he'd been sore that you were spending so much time working that summer, and you'd thought he was silly because you spent pretty much all the time you weren't working or helping your Ma out with him.

You also remember other things - his birdlike collarbones, pale skin, lying next to him on the roof, basking in the sun. You remember his mouth red from a cherry Popsicle you bought him, a novelty at the time that you ran all the way home carrying so it wouldn't melt. "I used to jerk off thinking about you sometimes," you say.

"Me too," says Steve, his breath hot against your mouth. His hand slides down your back to cup your ass. "I still do sometimes."

"I'm right here, you know," you say, a little indignant but also somewhat pleased.

"Yeah, I know," Steve replies, grinning slightly. "I wouldn't want you to become indisposed, is all."

"I don't think there's any danger of that," you say. You push his t-shirt up and drag your mouth down his neck, mouthing the line of one of his pectoral muscles and licking his nipple. He makes a surprised noise and you do it again; the way he's looking at you, it seems like he never thought that that might feel good.

You push him back gently, and watch him as you drag your mouth down his stomach. He's always been slightly ticklish, a fact the serum didn't change, and you enjoy the feeling of him squirming underneath you, muscles jumping and breath hitching. When you get to his pants, he lifts his hips to help you pull them down.

He's not afraid. He doesn't seem afraid, which is good, considering -- considering what you did -- you yank his underwear down and don't bother with teasing, just open your mouth and take in as much of him as you can. The last person you did this to put one hand on the top of your head to hold you there, but carefully. You were on your knees and your hands were cuffed behind your back. You think it was supposed to be a reward for him.

The person before that was a mark. You were meant to gain his trust.

Steve is making bitten-off noises like he's still back in a shared bedroom and he's afraid to let anyone hear him. The weight of him feels good in your mouth, his skin velvety-smooth. He tastes a little bit like soap, but only in a distant pleasant sort of way. "God, Buck," he says; his neck is arched, head tilted back. "That feels, it feels so --"

You take him deeper, stretching your jaw wider, and let your eyes fall closed, focusing on what your mouth is doing. His hand slides down and cards roughly through your hair. His hips jerk forward and you choke slightly. You anticipate some kind of punishment, but there is none, just him stilling himself abruptly and muttering a breathless apology.

You remember it taking a lot longer, but it's only a few minutes before his thighs start to get more and more tense. His stomach is rigid, the blush on his face spreading all the way down almost to his navel. "Bucky," he gasps. "Bucky." He's trying to warn you, give you a chance to pull off if you want, but you don't want to - why would you? He's yours now, really yours, and you'll take everything he cares to give you.

The noise he makes when he comes startles you because it sounds almost like pain, and truthfully he does look dazed for a moment after you pull off, wiping his hand over his face and lying there. "I didn't know that would feel that good," he says eventually.

"You sure know how to flatter a guy," you respond, licking the salty taste from your lips.

He sits up on his elbows and looks at you. "You want me to --" the gesture he makes could be interpreted any number of ways, which you're guessing is how he meant it.

You look down at him, unwrapped like just about the best Christmas present anybody could ask for. You're only half-hard, and you don't feel like explaining it to him, but you don't know that you can take this any further right now either. You made him feel good, which is what you wanted, but right now you're not so sure you're capable of making it there yourself.

"Are you okay?" he asks, worried now, his brow furrowing.

"Yes," you say decisively, immediately, so that the frown smooths itself over a little. "I just might have to take a rain check on the --" You imitate the gesture he made.

His expression goes vaguely pinched, but he nods. "All right," he says, clearly feeling in that way that Steve Rogers has that he won't rest until the two of you are square, even if he can't make it up to you right now. God, you do remember that, you remember him. He's thinking that you made him feel good and he ought to be doing the same for you, and it's not fair if he doesn't.

"Stop thinking so hard," you say. "I can see the wheels in your brain turning. Listen, Steve, it doesn't have to be tit-for-tat. I did that for you because I wanted to, not because I wanted you to be obligated to respond in kind, okay?" You make a face at him. "Maybe I did it as payback for accusing me of cheating at goddamn pinochle. Nobody _needs_ to cheat to beat you at pinochle."

He laughs, grudgingly, and pulls his underwear back up. He sits up and looks out the window where the last little bits of light are creeping behind the other buildings. "Maybe we should go to the coffee shop and get breakfast tomorrow," he says.

Maybe we should stop hiding and actually leave the house tomorrow, he's thinking. "Yeah, maybe," you say, thinking of the girl who works there who already knew your name. "Do you think everyone has read it?"

"Knowing Pepper, I think almost everyone has read it," Steve says. He sighs. "Part of me - a big part of me - knows why you don't want the scrutiny."

"People weren't meant to be under that kind of lens," you say. People weren't meant to do a lot of the things you did.

"No," Steve agrees. He looks at you, then out the window again. "It'll be all right. Maybe a few rough days, but we'll be able to handle it."

A few rough days, you think. Rough weeks? Rough months? Probably can't be any rougher than the rough few years you've already had. You reach over and take Steve's hand. "Thanks for sticking with me," you say.

"One of these days you're going to have to stop thanking me," Steve says. The little smile on his face isn't the sad one. It's one you might not have seen before. There's humor there, and some hope.

"Oh yeah?" you retort. "You think so, huh? We'll see."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During a consensual sexual encounter with Steve, Bucky has a brief flashback to performing the same act while in HYDRA’s captivity.


	12. chanson de geste

_12._ _chanson de geste_

The next morning, Steve's phone rings while you are both still asleep. It startles you bolt upright, and Steve reaches for his phone with a displeased groan. It's later than you usually wake up, but not by a lot; you stayed up last night with Steve playing card games and talking a little about Brooklyn before the war.

"Hello?" he says into the phone, his voice fuzzy. You hear Natasha answer back, apologizing for waking him. You don't know how aware she is of his schedule but you have a feeling she wanted to catch him off-guard, and it worked. You stay quiet in the background so that she won't hear you, and you make to get up but Steve catches you around the waist and pulls you back into bed.

"No, it's okay," he says. "I must have forgotten to set an alarm last night." He rubs his eyes and squints at you, and then smiles, clearly nonsensically pleased to see you despite the fact that he sees you all the time. It's funny that waking up next to you is still such a novelty for him. You hope that particular novelty takes a long time to wear off. "Oh, yeah. That's -- no, that's fine. Okay. See you in a bit."

You raise your eyebrows at him when he hangs up, and he runs a hand over his face. "She's coming over here, so I'd say we have...an hour, maybe?"

"Shit," you say, looking at yourself, at Steve. You both really need a shower, and Steve still has some stubbleburn hanging on from last night. "All right," you say. "If we both shower at the same time it'll be fine."

You both fit in the shower, it's true, but it turns out it's a little harder to maneuver around each other when you're going for functionality rather than pleasure. Steve gets out first, toweling his hair off roughly and practically sprinting back into the bedroom to change.

When you go to retrieve your discarded clothes from the floor, he's made the bed almost as precisely as he usually does, but the room. Well. It could use some airing-out. "Should we open a window?" you ask. It doesn't smell _bad_ to you, just like a room somebody's been fucking in, but that in itself is pretty damning.

"I don't know," Steve says, looking pained and somewhat askew. "It's almost November. I think that's gonna be pretty obvious."

"Shit," you mutter, gathering your underwear from where they landed. "We could just close the door."

"Maybe I should just put the sheets in the wash." Steve looks between the bed and the doorway, running a hand through his hair. You abruptly wonder why you're trying to hide any of it at all, except that you think of the Black Widow's knowing looks and think how irritating it would be for her to hijack another one of your unwilling secrets.

The door buzzes, and Steve looks like he swallowed his own tongue. "Go get dressed," he says, shooing you out of the room. By the time you're yanking on your t-shirt and walking back into the kitchen, Natasha is standing there too, looking fresh as a daisy and holding a cardboard carrier with three coffee cups in it.

"Morning, boys," she says. "I know you haven't left your apartment in about thirty-six hours, so I thought I'd bring you something to remind you that the outside world still exists." She sets the coffee cups down on the kitchen island and then takes a seat. "There are some really tired and irritated photographers outside your apartment building, by the way."

You shoot a glance at Steve and take one of the cups, pulling the lid off and sniffing the steam it lets off. "I assume you at least read the press release," Natasha says to you.

"Yeah," you answer. "I had to sign off on it, of course I read it."

"It's scary letting go of anonymity," says Natasha coolly, looking at you as she sips her coffee.

Well, she should know, considering her rap sheet is pretty impressive in itself. She had a choice that you never really did, though. She chose S.H.I.E.L.D. over the Red Room; you came back to Steve because you had nothing else left. You'd like to think you would have made that decision for yourself if it had been presented to you, but nobody was particularly keen on letting you make decisions for about seventy years.

Steve sits down across from Natasha and takes a sip of his own coffee. "Thank you for coming by to check on us," he says. His hand lands on the small of your back where Natasha can't see it. "I appreciate it. I appreciate the concern."

Natasha makes a very tiny not-quite-smile. "I bet that's the closest you'd come to telling me to fuck off, isn't it?" she says. "You know, Rogers, if I didn't care I wouldn't have come here and I wouldn't be risking alienating myself right now, but I have to tell you something: I watched you go through finding him again and knowing what had happened to him. You dragged Sam around the country for five months looking for him after D.C., and then you just gave up and came back here and disappeared from our lives.”

She’s lost the tiny smile by now, and you could almost believe she looks angry as she says, “I realized after I didn't hear from you for a while that he must found his way back to you, but what I still don't understand is why you cut everyone else off when he did."

"I didn't mean to...leave anyone hanging," Steve says. You can only see him in profile, can't read his expression very well.

"You didn't mean not to, either," says Natasha. "I get this." She gestures between the two of you. "You said it before: Even when I had nothing, I had him. The two of you are so wrapped up in each other that everything else in the world  seems a lot less important."

Her expression is hard. "There are other people in the world who would like to care about you -- both of you -- if you'd give them the chance." She has the most confrontational way of expressing vulnerability that you think you've ever seen

"I'm sorry for pushing you away," says Steve eventually. "You're right that you and Sam didn't deserve that." He looks sideways at you. "Things were... they felt very fragile for a while. I was afraid if I got anyone else involved that I'd scare him off."

You feel only a vague sense of guilt about keeping Steve from his friends. "That's the other half of this," says Natasha. "Did you know every room he goes into, the first thing he does is find the exits? I watch him do it all the time." She purses her lips, then continues, very slow and very serious, "There are things that we don't get to escape from. I am worried for both your sakes that James's recovery is less a recovery than it is _coping_."

"I'm sitting right here," you say dryly. Next to you, Steve is very quiet.

"I know you are," Natasha says. "And I know that being afraid of the potential that everything and everyone has to hurt you gets very, very tiring after a while. And I don't want to see you go over the edge because I know you'll take Steve with you if you do, and neither of you deserves that."

 _Over the edge_ , you think in amusement; she's right, anyway. You did take him with you last time you went over the edge, more or less. Neither you nor Steve says anything for a while and Natasha shakes her head finally, sighing. "Just let us help if we can. That's all I'm saying."

"Thank you," Steve says quietly. "Thanks, Natasha." His hand is still on the small of your back, his fingers slightly curled. If anyone tries to pull him away from you, you think, you'll kill them. "You know it's not -- really in my nature to ask for help," Steve continues. "But I'll try to be better at not pushing people away."

"It's a defense mechanism." Natasha smiles her not-quite-smile again. "I understand. Thanks for giving me a chance. Not everybody gets to be friends with Captain America; it makes me feel pretty special."

"Not everyone barges into Captain America's apartment at seven-thirty in the morning," you say, picking up your coffee and taking a swallow.

"Well, I needed to catch you off-guard, otherwise I wouldn't have stood a chance." She raises an eyebrow. "Between the two of you, you have kind of an excess of willpower, you know. It's a little intimidating."

You wonder what it must be like to be on her side of the table. Natasha Romanoff must have spent a long, long time building an impenetrable wall that nobody could reach her behind - making herself untouchable. And she allied herself with other people like her, people who were distant from the rest of the world. Maybe it hurts seeing that Steve's not untouchable after all. Maybe it makes her feel like she's missing something essential. You feel, of all things, a little sorry for her. "I do remember you," you say to her in Russian.

She and Steve both glance at you with some surprise. "I thought you must," she replies.

"In English?" Steve asks hopefully.

"Sorry I shot you," you say to Natasha. In English this time, for Steve's benefit.

"It's okay," she replies. "I'm not a beach kind of person anyway. I prefer camping."

"I'm sure," you say. "If by 'camping' you mean 'stake-outs.'"

"Is there another meaning?" she asks, the little smile making a reappearance.

The three of you finish your coffees in silence. "It's not bad," Natasha says, depositing the cups and their carrier into the recycling bin. "There are a few right-wing pundits who are predictably outraged, most of the same ones who wanted to put me on trial when I leaked the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases, but you did yourself a big favor by already proving that you're on the side of the Avengers." She pauses. "Even if you did decapitate someone."

"Heat of the moment," you say vaguely.

"Well, Stark's gala is at the end of the month," Natasha says as she's slipping out the door. "I hope I'll see you before then, but if I don't, one of you -- both of you -- owes me a drink."

++

Steve putters around silently after she leaves. He's clearly feeling guilty, and you don't know what to say to assuage it. He's probably right that the tenuous bond between the two of you in the first few weeks was much too fragile to risk bringing another person into the situation.

You want to be mad at Natasha, too, except that everything she said did make sense. It grates on you to think of her watching you, observing you, filing little notes away for later. You've had more than enough of that for one lifetime. Still. She wasn't wrong.

"I didn't mean to keep you away from your friends," you tell Steve eventually.

"You didn't," Steve says immediately. "You weren't, it's-- I don't know. It's more complicated than that."

"Yeah?" you ask. "Everything about our lives is complicated. Doesn't stop us from living 'em."

"I don't know if I should feel guilty about not caring if I was around anyone else for a while," Steve says, looking down at his hands submerged in soapy water. "But I didn't. Even in the beginning when all you did was just sit and look at nothing, I just wanted to look at you because I thought I'd never get to again."

You smile even though your heart hurts. "You and your silver tongue," you say. "Even when all I did was sit and look at nothing." You did worse things. You did much worse things.

Steve finishes washing the dishes in silence, and you realize you have to tell him. You have to tell him that you know what you did -- to face up to it -- even if, after all of this, it means he doesn't want you around anymore.

"Steve," you say. Your mouth is dry. Nervous. "Listen, I need -- can I talk to you about something?"

When he turns back toward you, his expression is one of careful, considered alertness. Any anxiousness he's feeling is overridden by the desire to do right by you. "Yeah, Buck," he says. "Of course. What's up?"

"What I did to you," you make yourself say, holding up a hand to forestall him interrupting. His whole body goes tense. Fight or flight; he wants to run and you can't blame him. "What I did to you," you say again, for emphasis. "It was wrong, and I know that now. I don't -- I don't think I knew it at the time. They -- they taught me to use it as a, a tool. Just." You swallow thickly. "Another way of getting an advantage over somebody."

You have to take a deep breath after that. You can barely look at him but you can feel the force of his stare burning into you; when you meet his eyes for a split second they are so, so blue. Like a September sky.

"When I came back," you continue, "I had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to do. I was taking every context clue that I had and using it to try and fit into this situation. It wasn't my intention to hurt you - I don't know that I had any kind of intention at all, if I'm being honest."

Abruptly you realize how fast you are talking, and force yourself to gulp in a breath. Your hands in your lap are not still as you intended - the fingers of your left hand are rubbing at the nail beds and cuticles of your right, perhaps a nervous tic from before the war that has been corrupted by the fact that one of your hands no longer has fingernails. Steve glances down at your hands, his face expressionless, and you make them stop moving.

"I was just doing what my -- my programming told me I should do," you say. You feel strangely breathless now, and your words are thinner, quieter, less certain than you want them to be. "I know that I hurt you. Maybe not physically, but I did, and it was wrong, and I'm -- I'm sorry. And I'm sorry it took me so long to say all this to you, but I was scared as hell to bring it up, because -- well, Natasha said it. You're just about the only thing I have."

Steve is rigidly silent for a long few seconds and as the silence stretches on into distinctly uncomfortable territory, you say, "Listen, I'm not trying to -- make excuses for myself, I just -- I'm sorry, I wanted you to know."

After a few more seconds, he exhales. "I kind of figured," he says. "And -- I'd already forgiven you for it." He sits down next to you. "I wish I had just told you to stop, honestly. I wish I had asked you not to. But I was so scared that if I pushed you away then, I'd never have another chance. And the idea of that hurt worse than anything that you could -- do to my body."

"You forgave me?" you say, a little dumbly.

Steve laughs ruefully. "Yeah, Buck," he replies. "I mean, you shot me three times too, and that was a lot more painful, but I forgave you for that too. I know that it wasn't really you. Like you said, you were just -- doing what they taught you you were supposed to try and do. And I can't really blame you for that."

You almost feel mad for a second because of how easy it is for him to just be so good, to know you at your worst and still forgive you. "Thanks for telling me," says Steve quietly.

You make a sound that's supposed to be a laugh. "It's so fucked up that you're thanking me," you say, and then Steve laughs too and puts his hand over his eyes and says, "It really is, isn't it?"

It is, but it's what you've got, and it's more than enough.

++

You make a halfhearted, instinctive attempt to avoid Steve the rest of the afternoon, but he won't let you. Everywhere you go, he follows you, even into your bedroom when you lie down to pretend to take a nap. He's right there with you, curled up next to you, his fingers stroking your hipbone in the space between where your shirt's ridden up and your pants begin. You start to fall asleep before long.

When you wake up, the sun's setting, and you're starving. Steve groans, shifting behind you. "What time is it?" he asks. "I'm so hungry."

"Me too," you say, glancing at the clock.

"We should go get some dinner," Steve says decisively. "We should go out."

You roll over and look at him. God damn that determined look - even if you don't want to go, maybe as penance for confessing yourself to him this afternoon, he's made his decision. "I want Italian," you say, thinking of mounds and mounds of pasta instead of the fact that Steve forgave you so easily.

Steve's stomach growls in response, and he laughs. "Yeah, I think that's an agreement," he says, rolling out of bed and getting his phone. "There's a place Bruce recommended."

You run your hands over your face, thinking of what Natasha said earlier about the photographers outside. "Okay," you say. You get your sweatshirt and put it on, putting the hood up and pulling the sleeves down as far as they'll go. Even with the jacket on top you don't feel like it's enough armor.

Steve reappears in the doorway to your room, tying his left shoe. "Come on, my stomach's turning itself inside out," he says. "I got the address; it's close enough to walk."

You feel perversely claustrophobic at the thought. All those windows, all those people inside their apartments, looking down at you. "All right," you say, hurrying to the door and pulling your boots on. "Wouldn't want Captain America to die of starvation."

A guy sitting on the stoop of your building startles when Steve pushes the door open, and suddenly there's a flurry of cameras going off. You turn slightly away from them, letting your hair cover your face, and Steve steps in front of you. "Okay," he says, in his best I'm In Charge voice. "That's enough."

A couple more flashes go off, but then they stop, replaced with several of the reporters clamoring for a comment. "You can read the press release," Steve says. "We don't have any further comment right now."

"Not from you," says a woman with a shrill voice. "We'd like to hear from Sergeant Barnes."

"I don't have anything to say," you answer flatly, shouldering past them down the steps and onto the street. They follow you for a little while, then give up once they realize neither you nor Steve is paying them any attention.

You've lost your appetite somewhat by the time you get to the restaurant (small, family-owned), but it comes right back when your waitress sets a huge plate of spaghetti in front of you. Either nobody here notices you, or they're just pretending not to know who you are. It's refreshing. Maybe that's why Banner likes the place.

Steve looks like he's in heaven, and his lasagna smells pretty heavenly, so maybe he is. "I can't believe I forgot to eat," he says. "How could I forget? This is amazing."

"Have to thank Dr. Banner," you say, and Steve nods in agreement.

Once you've both slowed down on your food, he asks you, "It wasn't so bad, right?"

You look at him consideringly for a second and then shake your head. "Eventually they'll expect me to say something, though," you say. "Eventually the novelty of just seeing me will wear off."

"Cross that bridge when we come to it," Steve says stubbornly.

"You were right, though. This was a good idea," you concede. At least being here is a different kind of overstimulation than being back at the apartment. Sometimes the apartment can feel like it's filled with the ghosts of all your past actions, good and bad.

Steve smiles across the table at you. Nobody bothers you on your walk home. You feel pretty okay, despite everything. He's still here; you're both still here.

The reporters have left when you get back, and after he closes the door to the apartment, Steve turns to you and kisses you carefully. He looks at you and says, hopefully, "Maybe we could try again tonight?"

You want to give him what he wants. You do. You touch his face, molding your palm to the shape of his jaw. "I'd -- I'd like to," you say haltingly. "But I think...today has been pretty heavy. I don't know if it's the best idea."

You also don't want to disappoint him by having to tap out halfway through like you did before, but you know you're disappointing him now by refusing him. He can't hide the little flicker of it across his face, and you wouldn't want him to have to. "Soon, Steve, I swear to god," you say. But today has been such a goddamn rollercoaster that you don't want to be doing it just to try and end the night on a high.

"No, you're right," Steve agrees, sighing and running a hand through his hair. "You're right, it's not a great idea." He smiles apologetically at you. "Can't blame me for trying."

He's right, you can't. You watch _Alien_ instead and laugh at Steve when he gets spooked, and then you get tired and start to fall asleep on the couch while Steve watches Indian music videos. He picks you up and carries you to bed.

++

You have to get fitted for a suit, so of course Stark insists that you use his guy. You've seen some of the suits Stark wears and they range from vaguely tasteful to downright ostentatious, but the tailor is discreet and, Stark swears, talented. He would have to be, to keep Stark's business. Stark doesn't deal with people who are mediocre.

It's another one of those situations that should be awkward but ends up mostly a blank in your mind, because you go somewhere else while he's measuring your inseam and wherever you are, it's easy to just stand still and raise and lower your arms when prompted. Steve's not even in the room, so he doesn't have to see you looking vacant.

You feel like you need to immediately start saving energy up to deal with the people at the gala; instinctually you know you'll be fine because there's no other option, but it's a feeling that comes with a subtle undercurrent of dread.

You are looking forward to seeing Steve in a suit, so at least there's that.

The two of you have still been semi-actively avoiding the news and media for the most part, with varying levels of success. The PR people at Stark keep emailing you interview requests, and you have declined them all so far. The email are getting a little testy lately; you remember David saying that the longer you waited to comment, the harder the media would try to spin it.

Steve has gone out with Sam and Natasha a couple of times in the past week. It's good, they're good for him, and they deserve to get to see him, you keep reminding yourself. He always comes back looking happy, when he spends time with them.

You've thought about a few things. Barton wanted to see what you could do at the shooting range. That could be all right. Shooting, not talking. Banner and Tony are still trying to figure out where the Hydra signals were coming from, and Tony's standing invitation to upgrade your arm is, well, still standing.

It isn't necessarily that you're opposed to doing those things. Rather, it’s the lack of desire to do them. Aside from spend time with Steve, make Steve smile, figure out exactly what you spent seventy years doing, you don't seem to want a lot.

You wonder what Bucky Barnes wanted before the war, but that seems like it's just one of those great mysteries, lost to the decay of history. A question never to be answered, a secret never told.

Maybe you were always like this. Maybe that's the secret.

++

In the end, Barton makes the decision for you. He calls you. "Hey," he says. "Are you busy?"

Busy is possibly the exact opposite of what you are. "No," you say, shifting. "Why?"

"Come down to the Tower," he says. "I'm in the mood to shoot some stuff but nobody else is around. We can get a pizza. Tony made me some new arrows that I want to try out."

Steve is with Sam at the V.A.; you were supposed to go but begged off at the last minute. "Okay," you say.

"Really?" Barton sounds surprised. "Okay, cool. I'll...see you soon, I guess."

You look down at yourself. You're still wearing sweatpants and you have a half-eaten bag of rice cakes leaning against your thigh as if it's a pet cuddling with you. "Sad," you mutter to yourself, standing up and brushing crumbs off your lap.

You go into the bedroom and change into black jeans and a sweater you picked up recently because it's been getting colder. You have a few days' worth of stubble and when you look in the mirror you think you look like some kind of disgruntled, disheveled mountain man, so you shave it off and brush your hair out before you leave.

You could have called a car. You should have called a car. You pull the hood of your sweatshirt up and its sleeves down. There are no reporters waiting outside. They must have gotten tired of you never saying anything.

The subway station is cold, and you shift from leg to leg as you wait for the train. There's a person of indiscriminate gender watching you - short hair, boyish cut, but slender wrists and large eyes, sexless under a large coat. The person smiles at you hopefully when you catch them watching. Holding a plain black book and a portfolio case. Art student, maybe. You wish Steve would draw again. You smile back a little, and the other person glances shyly away.

The train into the city is crowded and you end up standing packed like a sardine into a tin can, parts of your body pressed against the bodies of other people. The art student is standing near you and you occupy yourself watching them manipulate their phone. You snort softly when they Google you. The picture it brings up is an old one, probably one of the ones from the Smithsonian exhibit.

With a slight turn and a crane of the neck, the art student sees you again, catches your eye, and jumps a bit, turning back around again hurriedly. Nobody else on the train is paying you nearly as much attention. A couple of them glance up a few times, but with your metal hand in your pocket and your hood up you feel you have managed to more or less maintain a thin, carefully placed veneer of anonymity.

When you get off in midtown, the wind feels somehow harsher than it did in Brooklyn, so you pick up the pace a bit, shoulders around your ears. Winter's creeping in, slow but sure, and you forgot what that felt like - for you, winter always came all at once. You've missed the changing of the seasons.

"Hi," you say to the receptionist, leaning on the counter as you sign in. "Here to see Barton. You know what floor he's on?"

"Sixty-one," she says, smiling at you a bit too. Her smile is bland and practiced, but you don't mind. You smile back at her too because that's what you do.

"Thanks," you say, heading for the elevator bank.

"A pleasure to see you again, sir," says JARVIS, once you're inside the elevator. He knows you don't really like it - the mirrored walls, the feeling of sinking and rising. "It's been some time."

"I've been kind of hiding," you say.

"Yes," JARVIS replies. "I assume your seclusion comes in response to the press release and subsequent media frenzy - if you'll forgive my hyperbole - that occurred immediately afterward."

"Yeah, that's about it," you answer, pushing your hood down and running a hand through your hair.

"Pardon me for comparing two very different situations, but I have witnessed similar behavior from Mr. Stark after many events which attracted a great deal of press attention." JARVIS pauses. "It seems to be a fairly common human behavior."

It's kind of sweet, really. JARVIS's way of telling you you're normal - or as normal as Tony Stark, anyway, which is really not normal at all. "Thanks, JARVIS," you say.

"I do hope your period of seclusion doesn't last too long," JARVIS replies.

"Me too," you reply, straightening up as the elevator reaches its destination and you step out, looking at the long corridor with a sense of blankness - which door are you meant to choose? Some of them will have shocks in the handles, to signify an incorrect choice, you must remember the pattern - until Barton leans out of one of the doors and says, "Hey! I thought you were never gonna get here."

"Sorry," you say, unzipping your jacket. "The train was late."

"You took the train, really?" says Barton. "Didn't they give you and Rogers both a shitload of back pay? I didn't really figure you'd be a train kind of guy."

"I don't have a drivers license," you say wryly, following him into the shooting range. He favors a bow and arrow, you know. A weapon you don't have a lot of experience with.

"I think Tony has some kind of personal chef that lives here, or something," Barton says. "I don't know, he has everything here, including probably an aircraft carrier that like disassembles into a toaster. Anyway, I just ordered a pizza, though. JARVIS will tell us when it gets here. They'll probably send some little Stark lackey up here to deliver it and it'll be the highlight of their day."

He's watching you as you look over the selection of weapons he's assembled. It must be mostly for your benefit, because you've never seen him shoot something that's not his bow. Maybe he likes to keep in practice with other weapons, though. It would be advisable.

You select a pistol, hold it in your left hand, and then your right. You pick up earmuffs, ammunition, and a pair of goggles, and put the earmuffs around your neck, looking at Barton.

He shrugs, picking up his bow as well, and the two of you line up next to each other, staring across at the targets. You are both quiet and still while you're shooting, and with the earmuffs on, you wouldn't be able to hear much even if he was speaking.

After a while you both stop and Barton sets his bow down. "You usually shoot with your left hand?" he asks. You look down; you have been, but.

"It's generally tactically advantageous," you answer. "Less prone to injury." You switch the gun to your right. "I'm ambidextrous, though. I can do either."

There's no real change in familiarity from switching hands. "So you were right handed, before." Barton glances out at your bullet-riddled target. "Good shooting, man."

You lift your right shoulder in a shrug. "You're better than me," you say. Not that the difference is particularly noticeable in a controlled environment like a shooting range, but you know enough about Hawkeye to know that it's true.

Barton gives you a considering look. "It's nice to have another sniper on the team," he says. "Guys like us usually don't get a lot of the glory." He makes a face. "Not that I want that, I'm way more comfortable letting Steve and Tony be the lovable -- or hateable? I don't know. Steve's definitely lovable, but I think people really hate Tony sometimes -- faces of the team. But you get it. There's a lot of sitting and waiting involved, and patience isn't exactly the flashiest skillset."

You think of lying on your belly on a rooftop, slowly and incrementally shifting your weight so that your legs wouldn't go to sleep. Three, four, five days without sleep. "No," you agree, "it's definitely not glamorous."

He resets the shooting range and you reload your gun and the two of you go at it silently again until JARVIS interrupts you to let you know your pizza is here.

The girl who brings it to you is very professional-looking even though she can't be more than nineteen. She has a badge on that says her name and INTERN in large block letters. "Thanks," says Barton, taking the box from her, and she smiles, dimpling deeply, before turning away again.

Barton sits crosslegged while he eats, and you eat too even though you're not really hungry, because it seems like the right thing to do. "I know the last thing you probably came here for was an impromptu therapy session," says Barton between bites, "and Natasha's probably been on your case about talking to me too, but I did want to say that -- I don't know what you've been through, nobody but you knows that, but I know what it's like to have a lot of blood on your hands and people telling you it's not your fault."

You know that he was under Loki's thrall for most of the battle of New York in 2012. "It took me a long time to get over the fact that I almost killed some of the people I cared about most," Barton says. "Actually, I don't really know if I am over it. But I know it made me uh, more aware of that. I can't change what I did, but I can make it up to them, you know?"

"I guess that's all we can try to do," you say. You read between the lines and you know he's telling you that it didn't make a difference for him either, that it wasn't his fault. The things still happened. You shot Steve three times and he forgave you but it doesn't mean you aren't going to spend the rest of your life making sure that never happens again, and remembering that it did.

"For a long time I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't know what to say," Barton says. "Now I still don't know what to say, but it's easier to admit that I was, you know, helpless." The juxtaposition of his words with the fact that he's holding an enormous slice of pizza and half of the cheese is falling off is kind of funny.  

You fold your crust in half and stick it in your mouth so that you won't be expected to answer that. Nobody likes to feel helpless, that's an obvious statement. You don't know how to describe to him that you were so helpless that you weren't even aware of it at the time. You were submerged so deep you couldn't even come up for air. "Did she forgive you?" you ask him eventually, once you've swallowed.

"Oh yeah," he says. "Nat may not seem like it, but she's actually a very generous person. Don't tell her I said that. Plus I think she still thought she owed me one, and now we're square."

"Owed you one?" you echo.

"Yeah," he answers. "I was the one who brought her in. Well --" he grins a crooked little grin, a twisted smile. "She brought herself in, but I kind of ended up getting credit for it. Once upon a time I vouched for her, and that meant something to Fury, and I guess it meant something to her too."

You nod, thinking about a younger version of Natasha, a beautiful face with a sharp-toothed smirk and a hidden bite. Ruthless, like she was meant to be. Like you were always meant to be. "For a while I really didn't know if there was anybody in there," says Barton. "But I should have known better than to doubt her."

You smile a little. "Erasing a person is a lot harder than it seems."

He shrugs. "They had you for what, seventy years? And here you are anyway."

Some version of you, anyway. "Yeah," you agree. You always had something to grab onto, though -- Steve. Steve stayed, through it all.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It's Steve, as if you've summoned him by thinking about him. "Sorry," you say to Barton, answering it. "What's up?"

"I just got home," Steve says. "Did you go out?"

"Are you worried about me?" you ask, gently teasing. You know he is. You know it's not unreasonable for him to be worried. It's why you have to make a joke. "Thanks, Dad. Yeah. I'm at Stark Tower with Barton."

"Oh," Steve says. He sounds pleasantly surprised. "Okay. Are you -- going to be back soon?"

"Probably," you say, looking at the mostly-empty box of pizza. "Don't wait up for me if it's your bedtime, though."

"It's four in the afternoon," Steve replies dryly. "And I'm not the one who needs an afternoon nap. Just calling to check in. I'll see you later, Buck."

"Yeah, I'll see you in a little while," you say with a laugh, and hang up. Barton is giving you an amused glance. It's odd to you, that none of them seem to realize how funny Steve is. He always has been. You were always making each other laugh.

"You know, he's a lot happier since you came back," Barton says. "It's good. He deserves to be happy."

"Yeah, he does," you agree, putting your phone back in your pocket and getting another slice of pizza.


	13. chansons d'amour

_13\. chansons d’amour_

Steve is watching the news with a frown on his face when you open the door -- just a thoughtful frown, you hope, nothing more dire than that. He turns the TV off when he sees you and the frown melts away and you feel just absolutely dopey for a second watching him smile at you. "How was it?" he asks.

"It was fine," you say, and then amend, "It was good. I took the train over, we shot some stuff, we got a pizza. He talked to me a little."

Steve raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, about our shared life experiences," you say. "It was fine. He wasn't pushy, he gets it. Natasha probably told him to try and talk to me."

You unzip your jacket and your sweatshirt and hang them both up on their hooks by the door. For a second you just look at them, your stuff and Steve's stuff, belonging here, just like it used to be. "How were Sam and Natasha?" you ask.

"Sam's doing really well at his new job," Steve says. "I think it's a lot higher-pressure than the one he had in D.C., but he's -- you should see him. He's really good at what he does. He gets into these situations with people that I wouldn't know how to handle in a million years, and somehow he knows just what those people need."

You sit down next to him and he turns toward you on the couch, nudging his knee against your leg. "I've been trying to help out," he says quietly. "Sometimes it makes people feel better to know that Natasha and I have been through a lot too."

You can read between the lines well enough to know that he thinks you could definitely help out, and he's probably right. You just don't know that you're comfortable with that yet, if you ever will be. You don't want to be an example held up in front of the class. "You're a good guy for doing it," you say. "Not that I was in any doubt that you were a good guy in the first place."

"Flatterer," says Steve, half-smiling. He reaches out and tugs gently at a piece of your hair. "Stark's party is in a couple of days. It's on the news."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He smooths the hair back, behind your ear, and you lean into the touch. "That we're going to be there. The Avengers, I mean."

"How's the world feeling about me right now?" you ask, even though you're not sure you want to hear the answer.

"Hopeful, I think," Steve says, his finger tracing along the line of your jaw.

"Me too," you say. "Hopeful that I live up to expectations." You give him a smirk that you are well aware is pure 1940s Bucky Barnes and watch the way his eyes change slightly. "There was a kid on the platform today with a sketchbook," you say, after a minute. "It made me think of you. I miss your drawings."

"You do?" Steve asks. He seems surprised and flattered by it.

"I do," you agree. "You used to draw everything. I liked seeing how you saw the world. Especially me."

Steve laughs. "You want me to draw you?"

"I'm not opposed to the idea," you say. He leans back a little and considers you, his eyes raking over you in a way that is both familiar and also much differently charged than it used to be.

"I should get some supplies," he says. "I didn't keep much around. You're right, though, I should start again. It's more productive than watching TV and letting you cheat at card games."

"Hey, pal," you say, holding up a finger. "You remember what happened last time you accused me of cheating, right? Your absolute lack of skill is no reason to malign a perfectly honest player's integrity."

Steve snorts, grinning at you. He is happy, you realize. You remember seeing him happy before, and this is it. There's nothing dishonest about this, and as much as you might feel like you don't deserve to be the one it's directed at, what Barton said must be true. You always loved Steve in all of his iterations, even when he was irritable from all the constant aches and pains in the winters before the Serum, even when he was pissed at you because you pulled him out of a fight and didn't let his point get made, but this is Steve happy, now. Not just a memory, but the present too, and maybe the future.

"Barton said Thor's going to be at the party," you say. "The only member of the Avengers I haven't met. You think he'll like me?"

"Thor's pretty friendly," Steve says. "Competitive, but friendly. I haven't seen him in a while." He pauses. "Yeah, I think he'll like you."

"I appreciate the hesitation," you say, flicking Steve lightly in the shoulder.

++

"Break his finger," says Pierce, arms folded.

"Sir?" says the man standing next to you. He has your right hand in his. "Sir, we were given strict orders not to damage him."

"I don't care about the orders you were given," says Pierce. "I'm giving you an order now." He looks at you. Calm. He reminds you of someone, but who --?

The pain of your finger snapping - your right pinky finger. Not a substantial enough injury to keep you from functionality - makes you jerk. You grit your teeth to keep from making any noise. You start to sweat. The man holding onto your hand is looking between you and Pierce nervously.

"Look at me," Pierce says, and you do. "This kind of complacency will not stand, do you understand me?" You stare at him. "I expect more from you, soldier. I think perhaps you've gotten too used to being treated too preciously. Things are going to be different here. I expect you to perform optimally."

He pauses, then addresses the man holding your hand again. "Another one."

A sound escapes from between your teeth when your fourth proximal phalange snaps. You don't know what Pierce is talking about. You completed the mission. Acceptable collateral damage. You remember the briefing. You remember; you completed the mission as ordered.

Pierce waves the other man off and grips your chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing you to look at him again, though you avoid meeting his eyes. Your heart rate is elevated. "I know what you're capable of, soldier," he says. His voice is quiet, gentle. "And I know that if you perform as I expect you to, you will do great things for me. You'll change the world. You'll help bring about peace, prosperity."

His words mean little to you, but nobody has spoken to you in this tone of voice for a long -- a long time, how do you know that? You can't remember. You can't remember. You are shaking. Pierce pulls away with an expression of distaste.

"Tell Dr. Holder we're not done here yet," he says.

When the man in the white coat comes back in, he and Pierce stand in the corner of the room and talk softly, in voices you know you are not meant to overhear. You look at your hand, your broken fingers. You reach for them, to pull them straight again, set the bones with an audible click. _Hah-hah-hah,_ goes your breath.

"I'm afraid he may be beyond functionality," says Pierce, a phrase which catches your attention. Your head jerks up. You don't -- he didn't say that, did he? No, this, this must be a dream. "We'll have to disassemble him. It would be foolish to leave him intact."

He comes toward you smiling. _Wake up,_ you think. _Wake up, wake up_. He never said that. This isn't real. He and Holder had come back for you and they had put you in the chair and when you had woken up again they were pressing weapons into your hands, your right fingers having healed in the intervening time period. But he is walking toward you.

He picks up a scalpel and puts his hand on your forehead, pushing you back against the cot. You're powerless to resist him; all your muscles stand out in stark relief but you can't produce the effort necessary to push him away. He slices you from groin to neck and everything starts pouring out of you. You open your mouth and scream but Pierce just says, "Be quiet. You're embarrassing yourself, soldier," and your voice is cut off as if it never existed at all.

Pierce cracks your ribcage and you stare at it, all your twisted guts shining wet with ichor and blood under the harsh surgical lights. "It's all right," he says to you. "You've had worse things inside you than my hand, haven't you."

 _Wake up_ , you think. You don't want to see this. You don't want to think of what he means. You just want to get away from whatever this memory has become. "You should get Captain Rogers down here," says Pierce casually to Holder. "He'll be interested in seeing this."

 _Steve,_ you think _, Steve, no -- don't bring Steve down here_ \-- and Pierce's hands are slick and dark and he touches your face, turning your head so he can peer into your eyes. He opens his mouth and --

"Bucky?" he asks, but it's not his voice, it's --

"Bucky," says Steve. "Wake up, you're having a nightmare." You open your eyes and he is braced above you, confusion and concern on his face.

You open your mouth but nothing comes out except breath. Steve puts his hand on your face - no blood, thank god. "You were twitching," says Steve, "and breathing really hard, and you -- you're sweating like crazy."

"Sorry," you say, finally coming out of the paralysis of terror enough to shift, sitting up. Steve backs off a little so you have room to do so, then sits up as well, putting his hand on your back.

"Are you okay?" he asks you, quietly.

"Yeah," you say. "It was weird, that's all, I've." You swallow, your throat clicking. "I've never had a dream like that before. Usually they're just memories, but this one started out as a memory and then turned into something else."

Steve smiles wryly. "I hate to say it, but that actually sounds more normal than just dreaming memories all the time."

"I guess," you agree, laughing shakily, dragging your sweaty hair back out of your face. You hold up your right hand and look at it. It hurts. It aches with some kind of phantom pain brought back by the memory of having your fingers broken. You make a fist, then relax your hand again.

"Pierce is dead, right?" you say eventually.

Steve nods, stroking your back in long, slow lines. You blow out a breath and look at the clock. It's five in the morning, the morning of Stark's party. Of all the times for this to happen. "I want to go running," you say.

"All right," says Steve, getting up and then offering you a hand, which you take, allowing him to pull you up. He doesn't let go, just holds you close for a moment, and you breathe against his shoulder.

It's a cold morning, and the air feels sharp as you inhale it, as if to remind you: Yes, you are alive. Yes, you are in this body.

You run until you actually start to feel tired, Steve keeping pace by your side, the two of you falling into perfect step more than once. You are aware of people watching you, the denizens of the city who are up this early, some of them coming home from the night shift, some leaving for work, some not having gone to sleep at all the night before.

"I think we should probably turn back," Steve says as you wait for a light to change. He's slightly bent over, hands on his knees, and he actually looks winded.

You think about making a joke, but you don't have the energy to do it right now. You can still see Pierce's hands pulling apart your ribs, in your mind's eye. The picture has a surreal quality to it now that you're outside of the dream, everything too bright and too visceral, but it doesn't make it easier to think about it. "Okay," you say. "Let's go back."

Steve's shirt has a generous number of sweat spots dampening it when you get back to your neighborhood. There's a reporter waiting outside the apartment building, huddled into her coat with a cup of coffee, looking bleary and miserable. She almost spills it in her effort to get her camera ready to snap a photo.

Steve just starts to go past her without a word, and for a second she starts to say something but the way he looks at her shuts her up so fast it almost makes you laugh. You stand behind him as he unlocks the door into the building, leaning your face against his shoulder, and watch out of the corner of your eye as she goes back down the steps and leaves.

He takes your hand gently and leads you up the stairs, and fuck it all if you don't appreciate the sweetness of it, the little point of contact. He doesn't let go until he's pushing open the door to the apartment. As soon as you're both inside, he takes off his shoes and his jacket and then turns to face you. "Do you think you'll be all right?" he asks. "Tonight?"

"Do _you_ think you'll be all right tonight?" you counter, and he makes a face at you.

"Buck, I'm serious," he says. "After this morning, if it's going to be too much, all you have to do is tell me. I'm not gonna think any less of you, and frankly, I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks, either."

You laugh, thinking that it'd be something if the world could hear him right now. He cups your face in one hand and unzips your jacket with the other and you don't think about Pierce's hand on your chin. "Thank you," you say, voice rusty. "I think it's something I need to do, though. We can't keep hiding forever, Steve."

"I don't know, I'd certainly be willing to try," Steve says, giving you a lopsided smile. You look at his smile, his mouth, the sweat pooling in the hollow of his neck. Perversely, you think of running away somewhere with him, lying in bed with him for days with nowhere to go, having sloppy sex until neither of you can get it up again. It's stupid how tempting the fantasy is, but it's just that - a fantasy. He's Captain America, and you're the Winter Soldier. No matter where you'd go, someone would follow. Someone would find you. Steve's conscience would find you, if nothing else.

"You'd be reduced to saving kittens from trees and pulling Little Timmy out of the well," you say to him. "You'd go nuts, and I'd go nuts watching you go nuts, and you know it." You reach across and pull on the hem of his shirt. He gives you a perplexed look and takes it off, leaving him in just his jogging pants and bare feet, his skin goosebumping up in the cool air.

You take yours off too, watching beads of sweat track along his chest and stomach, and step toward him. "Oh," he says. " _Oh_."

The bed's a wreck already, the sheets will need to be washed again, so you push him down on it and pull his pants off, stripping out of your own running tights with a little more difficulty. He's hard already, and you straddle him, lining your cocks up together and stroking them both at the same time. "Try--" he says, going pink, "try it with your left hand, I want to feel."

You do and he closes his eyes, his mouth making a soundless 'o'. You want more, you want to do more, but neither of you lasts long enough, and after you've come you feel exhausted and all you want to do is lie on top of him and go back to sleep.

"Is it really bad if we just fall asleep again?" Steve asks muzzily from underneath you, his hand carding through your hair. You shake your head and he laughs, the vibration of it buzzing against your cheek.

"Shut up, I'm trying to sleep," you mutter, thinking vaguely that you should resist, that you don't want to have another dream, but Steve's warm weight feels like an anchor, like safety, and anyway your eyes are drifting closed already.

++

By the time the evening rolls around, you feel like the day has run its course twice already, as if time stretched out like taffy. You're exhausted.

You look at yourself in the mirror, adjusting your tie, your cufflinks. You can't decide what it is you're seeing - it's almost as if someone has overlaid a very thin veneer of your former self over your current body. Your face smooth, your hair as neat as it ever gets. All wrapped up in clothes that fit because they were made to fit you. Hydra never bothered with that; every time they stuffed you into anything other than tactical gear, it was only an approximation.

Steve peers around the doorframe of the bathroom and smiles, his whole face lighting up. You know he's seeing you as you were before, but at least it doesn't hurt him to remember it. He, himself, looks astonishing. He looks perfect. How could anyone look at him and doubt him? He looks like the best of what humanity has to aspire to.

He comes to you and puts his hands on your face, running his fingers along your cheeks. You shaved closer than you ever do normally, and you know he's noticing it in the way the pads of his fingertips graze lightly over your skin. "You look great," he says. "You really do."

All the black and white makes him look like a skillfully painted portrait, full of color and vibrance. You look at yourself and compared to him you look like someone has painted you in pastels, pale and wan. "Thanks," you say. "You look --" your throat clicks a little when you can't find the word. "You look good too."

"Are you ready?" he asks, letting go of your face and adjusting your tie instead, setting it askew the slightest bit where you just straightened it.

You smile at him, lopsidedly. "That's a big question," you say, and then, "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go."

Black car, dark windows, black suits, black ties, white shirts. You drift as the streets pass by, and behind the privacy screen Steve holds your hand, resting your intertwined fingers against his thigh, but doesn't say anything. It's going to be fine, you think to yourself, as if by willing it you can make it so.

There are flashbulbs when you step out of the car, and you smile and lift your right hand to wave, because that is what you are supposed to do. You've seen it many times, this isn't a new trick. You stand next to Steve and let all these people take your picture, memorialize your face and your form, expose the identity that so many people worked so hard to keep so very secret. Your left hand in your left pocket.

"Let's go inside," Steve says, after a few minutes, and you nod, letting the smile dim a little but not disappear entirely as you follow him in. There's music, and the sound of many people talking at a low volume. There's so much to look at. You find the exits.

"Hey!" says Tony Stark, gliding over with a cocktail glass in hand, clearly in his element. "It's America's national treasure and the one-armed wonder! Glad you gentlemen could stop by. There's free food and - oh, how could I not mention first, a lot of free booze. _A lot_ of free booze. One of the first things I learned about throwing parties, the booze must flow freely." He rattles his glass. "Me personally, I'm not drinking, but I suggest - I _encourage_ you to."

Steve smiles wryly. "I suppose we could have a couple just to fit in," he says, "but you know it doesn't do anything for me."

"It might, if you drank a gallon or so of straight vodka," you say, "but no, it doesn't work on me either. Thanks, though."

"That's rough," Tony says. "You're right, though, I did know that. We can play this off like I was just being a good host, right? Anyway, I know you eat, I have _seen_ you eat. So have some hors d'ouevres, the cocktail weenies are delicious. Enjoy yourselves. I told security to beat the reporters into submission if they see Barnes start to get twitchy."

"Gee, thanks," you say, raising an eyebrow. Tony laughs, and glides away, back into the swirl of the crowd. You turn to Steve. "So. Cocktail weenies?"

"Only if you promise not to do anything lascivious with them," Steve says, "at least not in front of any cameras," and you snort and follow him over to a waiter carrying food around on a silver tray. This whole scenario is vaguely familiar, but the version you know is a few decades old. Steve plucks up two of the most artful tiny hot dogs you've ever seen off the tray, and gives one to you, then pauses, looking perplexed.

You put the hot dog in your mouth as non-seductively as you can manage. "What?" you ask, once you've swallowed.

"I was just wondering if it's bad form to go for the food first thing," Steve says, looking abashedly at his little hot dog. You raise your eyebrows and grab another one off the tray, and he shrugs and eats his, too.

"Classy, Rogers," says a familiar voice, and you turn to find that Natasha has appeared behind you. She's wearing a long dress, deep green, with a slight blue sheen to it when she moves. "I guess Tony probably told you the cocktail sausages were to die for."

"It was in his opening monologue," Steve agrees. "You look beautiful."

Natasha looks pleased, and probably the closest she ever gets to seeming flattered. "Thanks," she says. "You two clean up pretty good yourselves."

You reach out and take her hand and she gives you a sharp look, but you just use it to turn her gently, watching the lines of the dress as she spins slowly. "It's a great dress," you say once you've turned her back to face you, letting go of her hand. "It moves with you well."

"Well, in my line of work it's more tactical gear than formalwear, so why not take the chance when you have it, right?" Natasha says. She looks cool as a cucumber but you can tell she's flustered, and it makes you feel slightly smug. She points at both of you in turn. "Both of you owe me a drink, by the way. I haven't forgotten."

Steve holds his hands up in mock surrender. "The alcohol here is free, as Tony made a very clear point of telling us," he says, "so I don't know that it counts, but I'm happy to get you a drink." He glances around. "Is Thor here?"

"He and Jane went out onto the balcony to get some air," Natasha says. By 'get some air' it's pretty clear she means 'canoodle.' "He was excited to hear you'd be here, though. He said he had, uh, 'greatly missed the pleasure of your company.'"

Steve laughs. "Okay," he says. "That's nice of him. So what can I get you to drink?"

"Vodka martini," Natasha answers, the corner of her mouth twisting up. "Thank you."

Steve goes to the bar and you watch his retreating back, intensely aware of both the fact that you don't need to follow him and the desire to do so anyway. You turn back toward Natasha, who is watching you, as always, keenly. "You know all you have to do if it gets to be too much is say so, right?" she says. "And I don't mean just to Steve. We're all watching out for you. Sometimes even I have a hard time handling these kinds of things."

"I doubt that," you say, smirking a little at her. Your eyes track over the floor. Normal patterns of movement. "But I do appreciate the sentiment." You watch Steve at the bar, where he cuts through the crowd with an authority which reminds you perversely of all the times you had to get drinks because the bartender would just ignore him. Nobody ignores him now.

"I'm going to make him get all my drinks from now on," says Natasha, arms folded.

A man you don't recognize comes up and stands beside her, watching Steve as well, before turning to you. He's older, maybe by a few years than Stark, and he wears a suit like the kind of government employee who is very used to wearing suits. "I should introduce you," says Natasha. "Agent Phil Coulson, this is James Barnes. James, Coulson."

"I know who you are," Coulson says. He's looking at you with -- some weird expression. He smiles and reaches to shake your hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sergeant Barnes. I grew up with a lot of stories about you and Captain Rogers. It's really an honor."

"I'm sorry to disappoint," you reply wryly, injecting as much of Bucky Barnes into your smile as you can. You grip his hand warmly, and the handshake lingers slightly, as if Coulson is touching something he thought was far beyond his reach. "It's nice to meet you too. I take it you worked with S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"I still do," Coulson replies. "What's left of it, anyway. Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff did quite a number on it." He looks sad and regretful for a moment. "We always knew Hydra had its claws in, we just thought we were doing a much better job of prying them out than we really were. I'm sorry for that."

"Hey," you say, "nobody knows better than me how insidious Hydra can be," and you start to feel slightly adrift, a feeling almost like seasickness (have you ever even experienced seasickness?) taking hold of the base of your stomach, until Steve comes back and claps a hand on your shoulder.

"Agent Coulson!" he says brightly, reaching to shake the man's hand, handing Natasha her drink. "Good to see you. How's the restructuring process going?"

The way Coulson looks at Steve is something you recognize almost intimately. "Slowly," he replies. "Rebuilding from the ground up is no easy thing. We'll get there, though. It won't be the same, but I think maybe it shouldn't be."

Steve smiles, and nods. "Nothing's ever quite the same the second time around," he agrees, and you want to laugh but don't.

"Gentlemen," say Natasha, "I'm going to mingle, but don't think I'll forget the second drink, all right?" She takes Coulson by the arm and leads him away, leaving you and Steve back inside your bubble again.

"I think maybe I should have gotten a drink," Steve mutters, glancing around. "Even if it was only to fit in." He glances back toward the bar. "Do you think the bartender will notice if I go back another time?"

"Steve," you say, "of course he's going to notice. The real question is will he care, and I think the answer is 'he's paid not to care.'" You shrug. "If you want a drink you should get one."

"I don't really want one," Steve says. "I just want something to do with my hands." He pastes on a bright smile and you see a blonde woman coming toward you with the dogged look of a reporter on the hunt for a scoop. You follow suit, and soon all three of you are smiling blinding, artificial smiles at each other.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," she says, reaching out with a beautifully manicured hand. "Christine Everhart, Vanity Fair."

"I think you probably know who we are," Steve says, shaking her hand. She turns to you next, and you do the same. Her grip is light, careful.

"I'd be a pretty terrible journalist if I didn't," she replies, still smiling, tilting her head slightly so that her hair spills over her shoulder. She's good, you'll give her that. "It's a pleasure to meet both of you in the flesh, though. I know it's pretty gauche of me, but considering you've been avoiding the press like the plague, I'd be remiss if I didn't try to ask you a few questions."

"Please," says Steve, "ask away."

"Great!" she pulls a pocket recorder out of some hidden fold in her dress, and you glance at Steve. "Captain Rogers, what do you think it says about our country's intelligence system that Hydra was able to infiltrate our most secret intelligence agency from the ground up?"

"I think it says we need, if not openness, at least accountability," Steve says honestly, easily. "The level of secrecy in S.H.I.E.L.D. was so great that the lack of information available to anyone but its highest-level members made it easier for Hydra to conceal itself. Without accountability, attempting to hold a moral high ground becomes meaningless, and I hope that this taught us -- America -- that."

"So you're saying you were kept completely in the dark?" Christine asks, holding the recorder steadily. "One of the country's most visible and highest-level operatives?"

Steve shrugs, glancing at you. "Essentially, yes," he says. "Was I happy about it then? No. Am I happy about it now? Certainly not. But that's my point: the idea that everyone knows only what's necessary to do their jobs is what allowed this to happen in the first place."

"What about you, Sergeant Barnes? Anything to add?" She's lost the smile and is all intense focus now. You think you like her better this way. It's more honest.

"Organizations like Hydra thrive on secrecy," you say. "I think one of the great things about this time in history is that we have the ability to easily make information accessible to everyone, without a lot of the barriers that existed in other decades. But instead there's still so much focus on hiding the information that we think paints us in a poor light. And I think that brings up two questions, in turn: If we think it paints us in a bad light, why are we doing it, and, why are we so concerned with image rather than results?"

"I think the answer to the second question is 'democracy,'" Everhart says, smiling again. "Which brings me to another question: Do you have anything to say to the people who think you might still be a threat to America's national security?"

You laugh, which probably isn't quite the right thing to do. "Hydra is a threat to America's national security," you reply. "And Hydra doesn't have a nationality any more than I had any control over what I did when I was their prisoner. I certainly don't have any ill will toward America or its national security. I just feel fortunate to have an incredible network of support in the form of the Avengers and especially Steve."

Everhart looks satisfied with that and clicks off the recorder - amusingly, you see Pepper starting to come through the crowd toward you, a look of alarm on her face. "Okay," Everhart says. "Thank you both for your time. And -- good luck, to both of you."

She reaches out one hand again as you think that's a funny thing to say. A little dire, but isn't everything, these days? As you're shaking her hand, Pepper, resplendent in her purple dress, comes up and puts her hands on Everhart's shoulders. "How nice to see you," she says to Christine, smiling hugely. "Bothering party guests. How am I not surprised?"

"It's all right," Steve says, "she wasn't bothering us," but Pepper isn't really listening to him. She's saying something about not thinking Christine had even been invited and leading Christine away with deceptive gentleness.

"I guess she was _kind_ of bothering us," you say. "She was about to leave anyway, though, right?"

Steve shrugs. "I'm not going to pretend to understand what just happened," he says. "I'm going to go get a drink. Are you coming?"

"Sure," you say, following him. Once again, he makes it to the front of the crowd with astonishing ease. Trailing slightly behind him, you feel like a pet of some kind.

"What do you want?" he asks, looking over his shoulder. You shrug, and he makes a face. "What do you want?" he repeats.

"Whiskey," you say, then shrug again. "I don't care."

Steve orders you an Old Fashioned and himself a Gin Rickey. You look at the glass when he hands it to you. You think this is the first time you've had alcohol since -- the war. Surely not, though. Surely, on a mission, or --

You're assaulted suddenly, as you take the first sip, by the memory of a group of men -- STRIKE, it must have been STRIKE, or whatever STRIKE was before it was STRIKE -- in a circle around you. A bitter taste in your mouth. "Give him a little more," says the man standing in the front, and someone hands you a full glass. You accept it and hold it, waiting for the order to drink. "I want to see if he really can take as much as they say."

"Just as long as he doesn't compromise the mission by pissing his pants in the middle of it," another man -- they're indistinguishable from each other in your memory, all black tactical gear and blurs where their faces should be. "What are you waiting for?" he addresses you. "Drink it."

You did. It was straight vodka.

"Buck?" says Steve, and you blink, snapping back to the present and taking a sip of your drink.

"It's just not the same, is it," you say, and he shakes his head, looking down at his glass ruefully. You take another drink anyway, and glance up to see you're being approached by an enormous blond man who can only be Thor. He's accompanied by a lovely young woman, a brunette as small and fine-boned as a bird, who has a distinct look like she's feeling that she doesn't belong here. "Hey, we got company."

"This should be good," Steve says, raising a hand to Thor in greeting. Up close, even in formalwear the guy is about as godly-looking as they come. He's roughly four inches taller than you, and he has a sort of internal glow of good health to him, like Steve but more intense. He's beaming hugely, and his teeth are perfect and bright white.

"Captain Rogers!" he says, clapping Steve on the shoulder. Steve sways a little and you struggle not to laugh. "It is my truest pleasure to be in your company once more. Captain, this is my lady Jane Foster." He pushes her forward and she waves with the hand not clutching a wine glass. "Jane, this is Steven Rogers, known among his shieldbrothers as Captain America."

"Hi," she says. "Wow, the number of superheroes I have met tonight is enough to give a normal person some kind of a complex." She reaches out to shake Steve's hand and you watch how his grip completely engulfs her fingers.

Thor turns to you. "You must be Captain Rogers' friend of old," he says. "I have heard tales of you, and I am pleased to see you reunited. Fate deals us many a cruel twist, but occasionally a gift as well. And of course I am pleased to have another warrior of great prowess as a shieldbrother, fellow Avenger!" He extends a hand to you, and you feel like bowing, but instead you shake his hand. His grip is just short of bone-crushing.

"Dr. Foster," Steve says, "This is Sergeant James Barnes. Bucky, Dr. Foster is an astrophysicist."

She turns toward you, her eyes quite large in her pretty face, and you shake her hand too, smiling at her in a way you are fairly certain used to make women go a little pink around the edges. You're gratified to see that it still has an effect. "So you're not really a normal person after all," you say. "Astrophysicist sounds pretty super to me."

"It's -- incredibly unglamorous, actually," Jane says. "Until a god falls through a portal into your world and you accidentally hit him with a car, which was -- really not my fault, but."

"Yes," Thor agrees, "The tale of our meeting was filled with adventure and peril. Alas, of late my days include peril more of the political sort, which I find quite trying."

"I find it trying too, when it keeps you on another planet," Jane says, punching Thor lightly in the bicep and then -- you laugh -- wincing and shaking out her hand. She's still looking between you and Steve with round eyes, like you're a matched pair and she can't decide which one she wants to buy more.

"Well, if you're ever in the area," Steve says, "you should stop by Stark Tower. You know, Tony's got a lot of equipment, and I think he's -- more of a roboticist, really, but I'm sure he and Dr. Banner would love to talk to you."

"Talk at you," you clarify for her, "If we're talking about Mr. Stark. But Steve's right, I'm sure they'd love to have you."

"New York could be fun," Jane agrees, looking up at Thor, who nods.

"I am certain you would enjoy yourself," he says. "Perhaps Tony Stark could be of assistance to your research." He looks back at you and Steve. "Jane seeks to understand that which Asgardians call 'magic' on more Midgardian terms."

"Science and magic are the same thing, really," Jane says, explaining. "It's just a different set of vocabulary words."

You glance at Steve, raising your eyebrows. "I don't know a lot about either of those things, so I'll trust you to handle that," you say, thinking of the Tesseract, which is safely back in the hands of the Asgardians now. In your experience it hasn't gone particularly well for anyone trying to manipulate Asgardian technology, but Jane just said she was trying to explain it, not use it for herself.

"What of you, friend Barnes?" says Thor, giving you a clap on your shoulder as well - the left. He looks a little surprised when he encounters the resistance of metal rather than flesh, and you hold up your hand demonstratively. "How are you finding this present age? How do you occupy your days?"

"It's different," you say, "but not so different. The more things change, they more they stay the same, and all that. So I suppose I find it perfectly acceptable. I've still got Steve, so I can't complain." You think about how to answer his second question, but can't come up with a suitable explanation, so you just leave it and hope he doesn't press.

"I find Midgardian forms of entertainment quite charming," Thor says, and Jane next to him looks like she's trying to swallow a laugh. "They are a pleasant distraction from even the most pressing matters." His expression changes, and he looks pinched for a moment. "I suppose you may have heard of the death of my brother."

"Loki's dead?" Steve asks. You see him school his facial expression into a sort of trite sympathy that clearly doesn't go all the way to his heart.

"I know you knew him little," Thor says. "You have less reason to grieve him than most. Yet he was my brother, and I mourn him still, even if only as the boy who grew by my side and not the twisted creature he became." He pauses, looking down. "He did somewhat redeem himself to me in his last actions, and I regret that none other than Jane and I know of it."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Steve says. "Sometimes you -- you love people even despite the things they've done."

"I wish I could have changed his path," Thor agrees. "I wish I could have shown him the error of his choices; yet I am lacking in any skill of persuasion, and I know his mind was willful and strong."

You wonder if Steve's comparing you to Loki, and then think surely he's not; you didn't have any choices about what you did. Whatever was going through Loki's mind, whatever suffering he might have endured, it was like Thor said - it was his will to do what he did. He wasn't played like a puppet.

"Still, there is a lesson to be found from this tragedy," Thor says after a moment. "I intend to spend more time on Midgard, once peace has established itself firmly in the realms and Asgard can spare my presence. The lives you lead, while short, are filled with such passion and vibrance." He puts an arm around Jane and gives her a little squeeze. "And of course I am never happy as I am when I am near to my lady Jane."

"Well, Earth will be happy to have you around," Steve says, smiling at Thor and then at Jane, who looks awkward but pleased.

"I thank you for saying so, Captain Rogers," says Thor. "And Sergeant Barnes, I look forward to seeing your prowess tested on the field of battle!"

"Thor!" says Jane. "That sounds a little -- bloodthirsty."

Thor looks abashed. "My apologies," he says. "Certainly I would not wish war upon the people of Midgard. Yet I have heard tales of your feats as a warrior, and having seen Captain Rogers in action, I think it will be a fine sight to behold."

"It's all right," you say. "No harm, no foul. I understood what you meant." Thor is about as subtle as a truck driving through a wall, but even only knowing him for a few minutes you can tell his intent is genuinely good. He reminds you of Steve, except if Steve had never known what it was like to be the underdog. And was from outer space.

Thor nods to both you and Steve so deeply it almost looks like he's bowing. "We will meet again soon," he says. "I am very pleased to have met you both here tonight. Make merry and enjoy the evening's revelry! It is a good night to celebrate."

"I told you he'd like you," Steve says, finishing off his drink with a slight grimace at the intensity of the lime juice where it's collected near the bottom.

"He doesn't seem like he'd really be the kind to dislike anyone who's not actively fighting against him," you reply, looking around again, scanning the crowd. Hands holding drinks, people laughing. You feel a little claustrophobic. "Were you comparing me to Thor's brother?"

"What?" Steve asks, taken aback. "Of course not, no! That's not what I meant at all, he was -- he was one of the bad guys."

You raise an eyebrow and give him a wry look, and he says, his voice a bit low, pitched so that only you will hear him, "Buck, don't even joke about that. You know that wasn't what I meant." Something about the way he says it, the protectiveness and hint of anger in his voice, gives you a little thrill.

"Hey," says Tony suddenly from behind you. You turn around and find that he has Pepper on his arm; she has a look on her face like she knows she's supposed to be enjoying herself but instead finds this trying as hell, but she also looks so amused by it all that you expect it's old hat for her. "Who's gonna dance first? I wanted there to be dancing, but nobody's dancing yet. Rogers, Barnes, you're from the forties, right? Didn't you guys used to dance?"

"Me?" Steve says, with a laugh. "No. I couldn't, my asthma would kick in, and then the war--"

"Barnes," Tony says. "Please tell me you dance."

"Bucky used to be one of the best dancers in our neighborhood," Steve offers brightly, and you give him a withering glance.

"Yeah, I can dance," you say. "Who am I supposed to do it with, though?"

Stark offers Pepper to you, and she says "Tony!" and then, "I thought _you_ were going to dance with me, not pass me around like a party favor."

You spot Barton and Natasha coming through the crowd toward you, and once Natasha is within earshot, you say, "Agent Romanoff can dance."

She gives you an unreadable glance, and you smile brightly at her. Barton steps to the side and gives an elaborate gesture, like he's presenting her to you, with his compliments.

"This is going to be awesome," says Stark. "I have great ideas."

You take Natasha's hand and lead her onto the dance floor. "Of all the things for you to remember about me," she says, the green dress twining around her legs like some kind of poisonous liquid.

"You know how to foxtrot, right?" you ask her, putting your hand on her back as the crowd starts to widen, giving you more space. The band strikes up something appropriate and you don't wait for her to answer before you start moving. You know she'll follow your lead, and she does, perfectly.

Her movements are all precision and no passion, technically flawless but somehow deeply guarded. "Relax," you say to her, in Russian. "This isn't a test."

She looks at you, but doesn't relax at all. It doesn't matter. Your body knows what to do even if the context is different. The movements are so practiced that you don't even have to think of them. Like snapping a neck, like firing a gun. One, two, three, four, you count. One, two, three, four. Natasha's dress spreads out on the floor behind her like a puddle, and the skin of her back is smooth, warm.

You think of a young woman, the lines of her legs and arms, standing at the barre, firing a rifle. First position, second position. Prone, sitting, kneeling, standing. You don't know how you know these things - the information must have been fed to you, because they would have deemed it unnecessary for you to watch something as mundane as dance practice. Still, though, the curve of her neck, the exact shade of her hair, are very familiar to you, if not as deeply familiar as Steve is.

The song is shorter than you remember; dancing isn't the same as it used to be. This is a sport for show now more than enjoyment. When it comes to an end, you and Natasha break apart. She is smiling, showing her teeth, and you lead her off the floor by her hand. Stark whistles and starts to clap his hands, and several other people follow his lead, creating a sparse applause. Natasha waves her fingers dismissively, and you continue to grin broadly as you make your way back to Steve.

Several other couples, Stark and Pepper included, make their way onto the dance floor, where a slow waltz has begun, so you suppose your job is done and you've broken the ice. "Thanks for the dance," you say to Natasha.

"You still owe me a drink," she replies. You think things between you are complicated for her, but she's still too reticent to tell you anything about why that is, and you don't care to ask, because then it'll probably be more complicated for you, too. She goes to find Barton again, and you watch her walk away, the pale, vulnerable skin of her back visible where the dress dips down.

Steve isn't smiling, and there's a look on his face almost like pain. "You all right?" you ask him, putting your hand on his arm, and he nods once, terse. "I bet I could still teach you," you say after a few seconds. "To dance, you know. You'd be good at it."

He does smile then, tight and quick, a flash and then gone again. He looks behind you and you see several people coming to you at once. Your hand tightens into a fist but on a second assessment they are not coming to attack; their postures express interest, benevolence. As if by dancing, you have exposed yourself as only human. You've made yourself far more approachable.

You spend the next few hours making small talk about stupid things. The weather, how New York has changed, what you think of sports these days, of politics. Sam Wilson shows up late and with his tie slightly askew, something about an emergency at work, and Steve talks to him for a while, then to several older men categorized by the catalog of your mind as being involved in politics in various ways.

The crowd starts to thin around one in the morning, and Steve is looking careworn in a way that is particularly familiar to you. He has another drink in his hand, half-full, listing to the side slightly, and he is nodding and trying to look interested for a woman who appears almost old enough to have been around for the Second World War. You excuse yourself from your current conversation and drift over to him, smiling. "Hey, old man," you say, putting your hand on his shoulder. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"

The woman he's talking to laughs, and Steve checks his watch and makes a face, and she laughs again. He introduces her as the director of a museum, and you shake her hand warmly. "It was a pleasure to meet you," Steve says. "I'll be in touch with you about the exhibit. Please let me know if I can help."

The two of you find Stark again; he looks like he's still going strong, like the party is his lifeblood and he's thriving off all the energy of people enjoying themselves. "Thank you for having us, Tony," says Steve. "It was a great time."

"Hell," says Tony, "thanks for coming, you guys were great. Banner's gonna be sorry he missed the dancing." He shakes your hands and then goes back to the conversation you interrupted, as smoothly as if the interruption never happened.

There's a car waiting for you outside. You smile and wave for the cameras again, and you get in first, Steve sliding in after you. He puts the privacy screen up and leans his head back against the cushion. The driver pulls away from the curb, and Steve is silent until you reach a stoplight. "You _were_ great," he says. "You were just like you used to be."

You loosen your tie and put your hand over your eyes. "I'm sorry," you say. "You know I didn't do any of it to hurt you."

"I know, Bucky," says Steve. "I didn't think you did. And I didn't mean it as -- you know I'm happy with what we have now."

"I know you are," you say. No use crying over spilled milk, anyway; you can't change the past.

"It just made me wish harder than ever that you didn't have to go through any of it," he adds, very quiet. He's sitting up straight again, his eyes fixed ahead of himself.

You ride in silence for a few minutes, and then he does look at you. "Are you all right?" he asks.

"Yes," you say immediately. "Yeah. I'm just really fucking tired."

"Me too," he says. "Me too."

When you get back to the apartment, you watch him undress like a kid watching somebody else unwrap a birthday present. You want to want more right now, you know you want that present, but you're too exhausted to do anything about it. In front of Steve, where you don't have to pretend to be better, in front of Steve who knows more than anybody else, you just feel hollow, like the marrow's been sucked right out of you.

He kneels in front of you, where you're seated on the bed, and cups your face. "I'm proud of you," he says. "I don't know how to say how proud I am of you."

You should feel embarrassed, humiliated. You should fight it; you're a grown man, you don't need him to be proud of you for making it through a party without doing anything you shouldn't. But it's not in you to be angry right now, looking into his eyes. The lights of the city through the window color him in an eerie glow, pale and inhuman as a marble statue. "I love you," you say.

He looks surprised, and then determined. "I love you too," he says. "I always have."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky has a memory/nightmare where he is tortured by Pierce. Includes bone-breaking and body horror/gore. Later in the chapter, Bucky remembers being forced to drink alcohol by HYDRA personnel.


	14. adrenal fatigue

_14._ _adrenal fatigue_

The next morning you wake up feeling distinctly hungover, though you're certain it's not the effects of the alcohol that did it. Steve's arms are wrapped around you and your face is pressed into the crook of his neck. For a moment you think of the times you shared a bed with him in your old apartment, when your roles were reversed. You think of his sharp knees, elbows, chin, pressing into you, and for a moment you miss that feeling, but only for a moment.

You don't move. You let him hold you and sleep. You look at nothing.

When he does wake up, he mumbles, "Bucky?" and then, "You awake? Time 'sit?"

"Don't know," you answer. He kisses the top of your head, your forehead, your cheek, and finally your mouth, his hands shifting so he can tilt your face up toward his.

"How're you feeling?" he asks.

"Beat," you say. It seems like an appropriate word to use. Like some kind of exotic fruit with a fragile skin, bruised all over. Beat. That's how you feel.

He sits back and looks at you and for a second you luxuriate in the feeling of being the focus of his blurry-eyed morning gaze. You remember how Steve liked to sleep in, when he got the chance. He was more of a morning person than you, but also woke up slower. He'd spend time licking his lips and blinking, stretching his whole body out, even when there wasn't a lot of it to stretch. You yourself usually woke up irritable, but all at once, ready to roll out of bed and go.

His thumb drags under your eye, where the purple smudges of dark circles seem to rest, the points of your cheekbones standing out raw under your skin in a way they didn't used to in photos. It's not that you weigh less than you used to; objectively you're sure you actually weigh more - there's more muscle on you than there was before. It's just something that changed, somehow, in your face. Maybe the ice did it.

"You can't wipe it off," you say, reaching up to still his hand. You kiss his palm, and his mouth twists. He's still all wrapped around you, legs twining between yours, fingers of his other hand on your hipbone.  

"Guess not," he says, shifting so that you're more under him and wrapping you up tight in his arms again, squeezing. When you manage to get a glimpse at his face again, his expression is totally unreadable. You know him well, but in that moment you couldn't guess worth a damn what he's thinking, and you're not sure it's something you'd want to know.

He gets up eventually to make coffee, and you pull the covers tight around yourself, staring at the wall behind the bed. When he comes back, you haven't moved at all, and he stands in the doorway casting his shadow over you with his arms folded. "You gonna get up?" he asks.

"Maybe later," you say. You know you're done sleeping, but you don't have the energy right now. Your mind drifts from idle worry to idle worry. You pull the blanket over your head, turn your face into the pillow.

He comes back again with two cups of coffee, and you hear him set them down on the nightstand and sigh. "Buck, c'mon," he says, prying the blanket away.

Before, if he'd done something like that, you would have yelled, smacked his hand away, complained. Cursed at him, grabbed the coffee and drank it with a frown on your face. Now you just lie there and let him expose you to the morning air. It's cold; you feel goosebumps spring up on your back. Your hair mostly covers your face.

"Bucky," he says, and then sighs again. He sits there with his coffee, his hands shifting around the mug. Eventually he pulls the blanket back up over you and leaves you there.

The sense of hollow exhaustion doesn't really subside, but you do get up eventually, after some indiscriminate amount of time has passed. It's bright in the living room, and you squint, going to sit next to Steve where he's on the couch. He looks at you critically but doesn't say anything. He's typing on his laptop, sending emails.

He knows you're watching, and he pulls up a picture from last night, of the two of you. He has a familiar smile on his face; the man standing next to him is almost unrecognizable. Your impression of yourself was even more successful than you could have imagined.

"I'm sure you can figure out how weird this is for me," Steve says quietly.

"I would be like that all the time if I could, Steve," you say. The words come out slow, like you're dragging them out one by one, lures on a fishing line bobbing out of the water.

"I just want you to be yourself," he replies, and you laugh.

"Who's that?" you say.

You don't think he's mad at you, but he doesn't want to talk much either for the rest of the day. He doesn't push you away, but you keep your distance anyway. Just trying to be safe. Just being careful. You read some of the articles about you, finally. It's easier when you have a sense of being removed from the events described. When it's just like reading an article about some other person.

It almost seems like you should sleep in your bedroom, the bedroom that's been untouched for months, that night. But you don't; you don't know if you can sleep alone anymore. Steve looks at you with a faint expression of surprise when you come into his room, and he chews his lip when you sit down on the bed.

"I thought maybe I made you upset," he says.

"No," you answer. You reach out with your left hand and push, right in the center of his chest, until he's lying down. You take off your sweatshirt and lie down with him.

"I know it's normal for people to have bad days," he says eventually. "But you just go away. I wish you wouldn't. I wish -- I wish I understood it better. If you were just angry, I'd understand that. But it seems like you're _nothing_ , instead."

"Anger wasn't an emotion that served me much purpose for a long time," you say. There's a long pause, during which you count Steve's heartbeats and breaths. "I'm not angry, Steve. I'm just tired."

"I guess I'll have to be angry for both of us," Steve says, but he softens his words by kissing your jaw and then your mouth. For a moment you think, _if only I could make you understand,_ but then you think -- there's nothing worth understanding there, not really.

++

You wake up the next morning and find Steve already awake, looking at you. His eyes are almost cornflower blue in the light filtering in through the blinds. "Hi," he says. He strokes your hair back. "How are you feeling?"

You shift, considering. The air in the bedroom is cool, but you are warm, and you don't feel the same overwhelming sense of exhaustion that you felt the previous day. "Okay," you say. You touch his cheekbone with the fingers of your left hand. "How are you?"

"I'm all right," he says. "I'm sorry for giving you a hard time yesterday."

You shrug. "It's understandable."

"Well, it's understandable to be worn out after a night like that," Steve says, frowning slightly. "I shouldn't have pushed you. You're not here for my entertainment, and I know that, and I'm sorry."

"I wasn't upset with you," you say. "It's really -- it's fine, Steve. Thanks for apologizing, but there's no need."

He looks like he wants to argue, but fights the urge down. After a minute or so, he asks you, "Do you remember Rose Carney?"

You shuffle back through your memory until you come to a face that matches the name. A girl with long blonde hair that she wore in a cascade of curls. Blue eyes, a slip of a thing - your Ma had looked at her with some disapproval, thinking that she'd waste away, but then your Ma never really liked most of the people you were fond of, Steve being chief among them. She had always had her hands full with your sisters, and couldn't see the point in being friends with someone who was such a handful in and of himself. Steve's mother had loved you.

"Rose Carney," you say, thinking of her pointed chin, heart-shaped face. She hadn't been your usual type - you liked knockouts, with big laughs and red lipstick. Rose was quieter, not really one for the nightlife, but she had been a great conversationalist, and you had taken her out a few times, the year you were twenty-two, before she said she couldn't really see things getting serious between the two of you, and you agreed and let her move on. "Yeah, I remember her. Why'd you ask?"

"I was just thinking," Steve says, "while you were asleep. There was a night, must have been June. You took her out and then the two of you came back to our place. I pretended I was dead to the world, but I laid there and listened to the two of you fool around --" he looks a little sheepish, like he doesn't want to admit he kind of enjoyed it -- "and then when you were done I remember you went out and opened a window and you were talking to her about art."

Rose was smart. She liked art and music, went out of her way to know about them. She had a bit of a political streak to her, too - most art did in those days. "Yeah," you say. "I remember that." She'd been interested in realist painting and photography; you remember her chin tilting up, her lipstick worn off her pale lips in the moonlight, as she had told you that she thought artists had a responsibility to represent the reality of the lives people led, to glorify the inglorious. You wonder why Steve's mentioning it now.

"When you were talking to her, you so clearly knew what you were talking about," Steve says, twisting a strand of your hair around his finger. "I knew you picked stuff up easily, but I remember thinking that you would have had to actually -- look for that knowledge, it wouldn't have just come to you." He smiles a bit, wryly. "And I knew you knew I liked art, too, but whenever we talked about it you always acted like you were too dumb to understand any of it. I remember wondering why you were pretending. If it was just me."

You scrape your lower lip over your teeth. You did know how much Steve cared about art. You knew Steve was a little bit political, too. Truth be told, you hadn't learned any of what you did because of Rose, specifically, but with her it felt safer. With Steve, you were always afraid that you'd cross the invisible line into caring too much, too obviously. "I liked hearing you talk about it," you say. "Partly, anyway."

"Partly?" Steve asks.

"Partly." You smile, maybe slightly sadly. "Partly I was afraid if I was too interested it'd be -- that you'd figure out how much I cared, and you wouldn't want anything to do with me."

Steve huffs out a soft laugh. "I guess I understand why you were afraid," he says. "For the record, though, I wouldn't have been that way."

"I know that now," you answer. "I should have known it then."

"It all turned out in the end." Steve shifts, pulling away and sitting up, squinting as the sun comes out from behind a cloud and lights up the whole bedroom. A shiver ripples over him. "I'm going to have to turn the thermostat up," he says. "I can't believe it's gotten cold so fast."

You grumble in agreement, rolling onto your back, and flex the fingers of your left hand. It feels slightly stiff, a feeling that would be more normal on a flesh and blood arm. You roll your shoulder, and the plates grind slightly.

Steve looks at you with some alarm. "Is that a normal sound?"

"Needs maintenance, probably," you say, sitting up and turning it again. It always wanted to act up a little when it was cold, and it's been a while since you've had it cleaned out. You could probably do that yourself, but you don't have the tools. You flex the elbow joint, circle your wrist.

Steve has a look of glazed fright on his face. "It's fine," you say gently. "It's pretty normal. It's just the cold. The works get gummed up easier when it gets below a certain temperature. It's nothing that can't be fixed in ten minutes."

"Can you do it yourself?" Steve asks, and you nod.

"I could, but I don't think we have the tools here." You shrug. "Stark will have what it needs. And I'm sure he'll be happy to get a look at it."

"I'm sure he'll be ecstatic," Steve says dryly.

Two hours later you're outside the tower with a cup of coffee, because apparently Tony Stark is never actually busy, he only ever seems to be. "Hey JARVIS," you say as you get into the elevator. JARVIS doesn't answer immediately, but some music does start playing, and that's a satisfying enough response for you.

"Apologies," he says as the elevator slows. "My processes were occupied elsewhere. A pleasure to see you again, Sergeant Barnes, Captain Rogers. Are you enjoying the cooler weather? My sensors indicate a lowered body temperature. I would suggest perhaps a heavier choice of outerwear."

"Yeah, I need to get a better coat," you agree. "The weather's not bad." Steve looks at you with a raised eyebrow and you shrug as the doors open.

"Mr. Stark is waiting for you," JARVIS says. "Have a very pleasant afternoon."

"Are you friends with Tony's AI?" Steve asks, his mouth quirking up at the corner. "I bet Tony would be really jealous if he knew."

"If I knew what?" Stark asks. He's holding two tiny mugs of what must be espresso, and looks disappointed when he sees you already have coffee. "Hey, I was hoping to get you guys to try this, I bought this fair trade coffee place. You know, diversifying my interests. Everybody likes coffee, right?"

Steve rattles his cup, which is almost empty, and then looks around for a trash can before a helpful robot wanders up to him and takes it. "I'll have some," he says. For a second Stark looks delighted, then --

"You're not gonna get all crazy and start running around like a hyperactive three year old, right?" he asks, offering Steve the mug, which looks comically tiny in Steve's large hand. "I know, supersoldier metabolism and everything, but I don't honestly know if I could handle that."

"I'll be fine," Steve says, taking a seat and sipping the espresso. You take the other mug from Tony and down it in one go - it's strong and bitter, but rich.

"You know espresso shots aren't like liquor shots, right? You're supposed to savor it, not dump it down like you're a sorority girl trying Jäger for the first time." Stark looks displeased, but motions you over to a chair amidst a lot of very technical-looking equipment and also several empty glasses and plates. "Sorry, it's a mess in here, I'm working on a thing, don't tell Pepper. She hates it when I eat in the lab. So what's the deal with this?" You take off your jacket and sweater as you sit down. He claps some kind of magnetic sensor onto your arm and you feel a faint pulse of electricity.

An exploded view of your arm pops up right in front of you. Stark turns and rotates it, exploring with both hands. "Never mind, I see. What is all this, you're like an air conditioner that nobody cleaned in way too long." He sits back. "Dummy! Bring me the, uh, the -- yeah, that." The robot that took Steve's mug comes rolling back over with a device that is fairly familiar, some kind of small, delicate vacuum.

You brace yourself for noise as it turns on, but of course Tony's vacuum is quiet, barely a hum above all the other humming electric things in the lab. He pushes your sleeve up to your shoulder and goes to work moving the plates out of the way one by one so he can clean underneath. "You've got a couple of damaged parts in here - looks like a servo going bad and a couple of wires starting to corrode." He's looking at your elbow joint, which makes sense, as that's one of the areas that receives the most pressure and activity, and is less aggressively solidly built than the shoulder. "I can replace them pretty easily, but -- does this thing come off?"

"My arm?" you ask pointedly, and then, "No, it's not really designed to."

He blows out a breath between his lips and digs a tool underneath one of the plates, lifting it slightly so he can shine a flashlight in. "I mean, I could get it off, we could just replace the whole thing - the tech on this is good but it's not perfect, it's not as good as it could be, you know what I mean?"

You sit up a little and skin your t-shirt off, careful not to snag it on any of the exposed metal. "You know how many times I've been shot or stabbed, or caught shrapnel somewhere?" you ask, gesturing to your torso. "You see any scars from those?" You nod toward Steve. "Steve's been shot too, any scars on him?"

Steve shakes his head, still sipping his tiny cup of espresso. You shrug your shoulder slightly, indicating the red, angry-looking scar tissue where your left arm connects to the rest of your body. "I've never had the opportunity to test the limits of the healing factor exactly," you say doggedly, "but what I know is that given a chance our bodies just push out whatever's in there - bullets, shrapnel, it just comes back out."

There's a knowing look on Tony's face, a grimmer expression than you've ever seen him wear. "It took -- probably a couple of years off and on," you continue. "It's hard for me to say exactly, because I was in and out of cryo a lot in those days. I do remember that every time they took me out, I was incapacitated while my body tried to reject this too." Incapacitated is a nice way of putting it. You mostly remember screaming, tears and snot running down your face.

You realize you've maybe made a mistake when hear the sound of a chair moving against the floor and Steve's out the door, his cup set gently down but still rattling slightly from the force of his sudden departure. Stark lets out a low whistle, vacuuming around your elbow and then reaching for a small clear bottle of oil. "So, no on the new arm," he says. "I think you might have given Cap the heebie jeebies."

"Probably," you say. Steve knows what it's like, the feeling of your body just pushing out something that doesn't belong there - or maybe it doesn't feel the same for him. Maybe it's easier, with the first version of the serum.

Stark is mostly quiet the rest of the time. He finishes vacuuming out your arm, oiling it up so it runs as smoothly as it can. It feels better when you flex it. "You'll have to come back for the wiring," he says.

"No problem," you reply, and, "Thank you."

He blinks at you. "Don't do that, you're gonna make it weird," he says, and shoos you away with an incredibly communicative hand motion. "You're welcome. Go find Cap. JARVIS, where's Cap?"

"Captain Rogers is currently in the gym," JARVIS answers.

"There you go," says Stark, stacking his collection of plates out of an obvious need to do something with his hands. "I'm sorry about the -- yeah, now it's weird, get out of here."

You put your t-shirt back on, carrying your jacket and sweater under your arm, and take the elevator down to the gym. A small group of people is watching; Steve, stripped down to his own t-shirt, bare feet, and jeans, is going at a punching bag with such force you're amazed it isn't completely destroyed by now. They must be reinforced.

You stand, hands in your pockets, watching him, for a minute or two. Steve's whole posture choreographs anger, the way his arms and legs lash out, muscles in stark relief. It's no wonder nobody has gone in to interrupt him yet.

You look at him. _This is how angry it makes you_ , you think. _What they did to me_. Steve's not a born killer, not the way you are, but you look at him and think he would kill all of them if he could. He'd rip them apart.

You shoulder to the front of the crowd, and then past. Your shoes hit the floor and he turns to look at you, resting one hand on the bag as it sways back and forth. "Hey," you say.

He's breathing hard, and most of the front of his shirt is soaked through with sweat already. "Hi," he says, guarded, pushing his knuckles against the skin of the bag.

"We're all done up there," you say. You rotate your arm, showing him, flexing the elbow joint so he can hear that it operates more smoothly now. "I gotta come back so he can replace the bad wiring. Another time."

Steve closes his fingers around your wrist and tests the flexibility. Cooperatively you let him move your arm around, as if he were some sort of physical therapist doing range of motion exercises. Only when he's let go of your arm and it's hanging down at your side again does he look up and seem to notice the people who watching him. His face clouds a bit and you step further into his line of vision. "Let's go home," you say.

"Yeah," he agrees after a moment. The intensity of his gaze is doing something funny to you. He's looking at you now as if you're the only thing worth looking at in this entire room. You wonder amusedly to yourself if the punching bag felt the same way.

You pull your sweater over your head and get his shirt and jacket for him where he's thrown them in a heap. He pulls the shirt on and buttons it over his sweaty t-shirt with a look of distaste, jacket over his shoulder for now, and bends to put his shoes back on.

The crowd parts like the Red Sea when the two of you approach. Nobody says anything. This is what it feels like, you think. Being an Avenger. Everybody wants to watch.

Steve is very quiet. For once you feel like you're the one who should be helping; you reach over and touch his shoulder, squeeze it. You rub his back in slow circles, the same way you can remember him doing for you. Finally, when you're almost back home again, he says, "I shouldn't even be upset." He looks at you, his eyes tired. "You're not upset."

"I had a lot of time to resign myself to it," you say, thinking that 'upset' would be a mild word to describe how you were before they burnt it out of you, before the arm either healed sufficiently or your pain tolerance blew that particular hurt into practical nonexistence. "Steve?" you add, and he looks at you again. "It's -- nice, actually. Having somebody be angry on my behalf. I just wish it didn't always have to be you."

"Like I said," Steve replies. "I'll just have to be angry enough for both of us."

You can see the remnants of the anger even more easily when you're inside the apartment. Steve's hands shake slightly as he takes his shoes off. His knuckles are bruised where he wrapped them hastily. He seems to take up even more space than usual.

You have an idea, one helped along by the slight buzz of realizing how violently Steve feels this particular emotion. You grab him by the wrist and spin him toward you. "Bucky?" he asks, and you grin at him and slam him back against the wall. Everything rattles, and his keys fall off their little hook and drop to the floor as you lean in to kiss him.

He's stiff for a moment and then he thaws, coming to life underneath you. You press against him and put both hands in his hair, pulling it hard enough that you know he'll feel a slight sting. You pin him to the wall with the length of your body and you can feel him getting hard as you rub against him, kissing him and kissing him insistently until you have to pull away to gasp in a few quick breaths.

His face is red, his mouth swollen. He looks shocked. You yank him away from the wall by the collar of his shirt, popping a couple of the buttons unintentionally. He's still damp with cooling sweat, underneath, and you slide your hands beneath his t-shirt so you can feel him.

You push him toward the bedroom and pull your own sweater over your head, tossing it aside. He stops just in the threshold, filling up the doorframe as he looks at you uncertainly. You grab him and kiss him again, walking him backwards and unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way. For all he seems uncertain, there's nothing in the way he's kissing you to suggest that - his tongue is in your mouth, one hand on your hip and the other in your hair.

You knock him down onto the bed and follow him, straddling him and taking off your t-shirt, then reaching for his too. When he lifts his shoulders to peel it off, you watch him breathe, watch the muscles of his torso rise and fall. You slide your fingers over them. You remember counting his breaths back to him, all his ribs plainly visible beneath his skin. In truth you don't know which version of him you love better, except that this one you get to have, to keep.

He looks up at you questioningly and you shuck your jeans off, throwing them into the corner and then falling forward onto your forearms to put yourself within kissing reach again. He does kiss you, eagerly, and his fingers seek out and find the join of your left arm to your shoulder. His fingertips quest with a sort of focus which tells you what he's thinking about. You bite his lip, kiss along his jaw, nudging his chin up so that you can get at the soft skin behind the corner of his mandible. "Does it still hurt?" he asks you. You feel the pads of his fingers so keenly you think you can almost feel his fingerprints.

"Sometimes," you say honestly, not sure why exactly you're telling him the truth except that you're unable or unwilling to lie. He inhales, tilting his head back a little further. You taste his pulse.

His hands slide down between you and he gets his own pants and underwear off efficiently, then palms your hips, your ass. "Kiss me again," he says, so you leave off the darkening mark above his carotid artery and cover his mouth with yours.

He pushes his hips against yours, clumsily, insistently. You think he's looking for some kind of comfort, which should be funny - comfort, coming from you - but instead you're just determined to give it to him. "Steady," you say into his mouth, the word coming out muffled. He looks at you, his eyes bright. He nods.

You slide your mouth down again, kissing the hollow of his clavicle. You kiss his sternum, lip at the well-defined line of one pectoral muscle, and scrape your teeth over one of his nipples. His body jerks, and he lets out the tiniest surprised sound. When you look up at his face again, he has his eyes closed and his cheeks are bright pink. "Steve," you say, and he opens his eyes again.

He told you before that he didn't want to say no to you, so you don't ask him to. Instead, you say, "Tell me yes," and he says, immediately, "Yes, Bucky," and then adds, "Please," licking his lips.

You slip further down and nuzzle at his hipbone, running your tongue along the underside of his cock as you reach into the rickety little bedside table for the lube. His dick jerks, and you can't resist closing your hand around the base of it and sucking the head into your mouth. He makes a thin, high noise at that, and another when you press one careful finger inside him. He's very tight, and tense besides, and you let go of his cock for a moment to take hold of his knee instead, stroking your thumb against the knob of bone and rotating it out and to the side, spreading his legs wider.  

You suck his cock into your mouth until your nose is pressed against his belly, and he says your name, surprised, his hand coming down and twisting into your hair, flattening gently against the curve of your skull. You look up at him through the curtain of your eyelashes and your hair, moving your finger inside him in the same rhythm as your mouth moving on his cock, and he starts to relax, gradually.

This will never not be a vulnerable position to be in, for either of you. For anyone, really. Neither of you, your bodies twisted and changed into weapons, are accustomed to being comfortable with vulnerability. It's not what you were meant for.

You let him slip out of your mouth for a moment so you can say, "Relax," and, sliding a second finger inside, "I've got you." His lashes flutter, his lips wet. The flush has spread down to his chest. He doesn't say anything in response, but his fingers in your hair circle gently against your scalp, so you add a third finger when you judge him relaxed enough to allow it.

You twist your fingers slightly, angling them to find his prostate, and the instant that you do his eyes fly open again and you can see the second that he gets it, understands, lets his body take over for him and do what it's supposed to. It's one thing to know about it; it's another entirely to have somebody else do it for you.

"Buck," he chokes out, his fingers clenching against your head. You work the flat of your tongue against the head of his cock, looking up at him, and rub your fingers against that spot inside, and he gives a surprised shout, coming partly into your mouth but mostly all over your face. The expression on his face is simultaneously embarrassed and incredibly turned-on, and you'd laugh at him if you weren't feeling a lot more of the second and none of the first.

You lick it off your lips, and his blush deepens, his breath coming audibly, raggedly. You slip your fingers free and climb back up to kiss his pink face, his mouth. He licks your chin and whispers, "Sorry," and then, "I made you a mess."

"I was already a mess, Rogers," you say, pulling on his hair and kissing him. At first his hips flinch away from yours with oversensitivity, but you feel the second he starts to get hard again, his dick pressing into your thigh.

"Bucky," he gasps, rocking up against you. "Please," and you don't need any more suggestion than that. You drag your hands down his sides, tilting his hips up and pressing his legs apart. Your dick is so hard that you can barely stand to slick yourself up, don't know how you're ever going to last, except -- that was part of it, wasn't it? Part of the training; even now, you think, your own pleasure is secondary, Steve is far more important --

You push the head of your cock inside of him. "Breathe," your voice says, the fingers of your left hand stroking his hipbone, and he opens up enough to let you in, inch by inch, the rest of the way.

You rest your face against his shoulder and listen to him breathe, listen to his heartbeat, when you're pressed flush together. You can feel him relax, little by little, until finally he asks you brokenly to move, please. His thighs come up around your hips, holding onto you, and your hand slides along the long muscle of one of them, caressing, as you pull slowly out and push slowly back in.

The noise he makes sounds like he's finally found the answer to a question he'd been thinking about for a long time. He's not silent, normally, but nor is he usually precisely _loud_ ; now he can't seem to stop making noises, the kinds of noises you can't really describe until you're the one who's making them. Breathless drawn-out sounds, for when something feels so good you don't have the words.

His palms land on your face and he pulls you in for a kiss. It's not much of a kiss, between his moaning and both of you breathing hard, but you can tell he wants it. His heel digs into the small of your back and you fuck him harder, shifting his hips until the angle is right and the noises get louder and even less coherent. His eyes are closed, and he looks like one of those statues, a dying saint, or a god.

He doesn't open his eyes this time when he comes, just bites down on his lip so hard you're afraid there's going to be blood. You feel his cock jerk against your belly and his body clenching down around you, and you can finally let yourself go, too. It feels like every muscle in your body going utterly tense, like you've been electric shocked, and then when you come, the most exquisite sensation of relief --

Steve has gone totally limp on the bed by the time you've finished shuddering out the aftershocks. He looks like somebody's just hit him over the head with a two-by-four, his expression nothing short of stricken. "Steve," you say, your voice rough. "You all right?"

He shakes it off a little, some of the glazed look clearing away from his eyes. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I -- thank you."

You blink at him, reach up and push your hair out of your face from where it's sticking to your sweaty forehead. "You're welcome?" you say.

"You have no idea," Steve says fervently, and then, again, "Thank you."

_++_

Steve falls asleep right after that, but it's about four in the afternoon and perversely you're not at all tired, so you get out his computer and sit on the couch, going over some spots in your history that remain hazy. You used to think that you'd be complete once you remembered it all, or at least once you could fill in all the gaps with corroboratable facts. It seems inevitable now that there is no such thing as 'complete,' for you, and never will be. You'll just have to continue to live with being incomplete.

Stark texts you. He's sending something over, he wants to know if any of it looks familiar. It's all code, just letters and numbers that fill up the small screen of the computer in an incomprehensible jumble. You read through it all, piece by piece, and you can admit you find it frustrating that nothing stands out to you. Above your pay grade, probably. There were plenty of things they didn't want you learning about.

You send him an email telling him you're at a dead end, and attach a few things he might find helpful if he doesn't already have access to them. He probably does, but at least your intention is there.

Steve wakes up after a couple of hours and wanders out into the living room, sweatpants riding low on his hips, rubbing his eyes. You think you can see the slightest hitch in his step and feel vaguely, disgustingly smug about it. "I'm starving," he says, his voice rough. "You wanna order some food?"

He has a hickey. It'll fade in an hour or so, but you stare at it while it lasts. Physical proof of the fact that Steve Rogers loves you, at least enough to let you do that to his body. "Yeah," you say. "Let's get...like, a whole lasagna."

Steve calls up the Italian place you went to the other night. It takes some convincing, even for Steve, to get them to let him order a whole lasagna, and they charge him some exorbitant price. You go down to get it when it comes, and the scrawny kid who's delivering it peers around the entryway, holding the tray gingerly.

"Is it really for Captain America?" he asks, and you nod, handing him a few bills, too much. A little extra for his trouble. He grins, his whole face lighting up with it, braces and all. "Cool," he says, pocketing the bills without even looking and then handing over the lasagna.

He goes back outside and cranes his neck, presumably wondering which apartment is Steve's. He gets on his bike and rides circles in the street for a couple of minutes before pedaling away. You smile a bit, at the honesty of it, and then you take the food upstairs.

Between the two of you, you eat almost the entire thing, and afterwards Steve leans his head back against the couch and just smiles with his eyes closed. He looks more satisfied than you've ever seen him in your life, and something dangerous and overwhelming swells up inside your chest, like you're an overinflated balloon, at the thought that you had a hand in it.  


Steve turns on the news and you half pay attention to it, mostly watching him, until he turns toward you and takes hold of your chin, drawing you into a kiss. You chase his mouth when he pulls away, and the two of you sort of trade kisses back and forth for so long that the news program ends and another one begins. You think to yourself clearly that if anyone -- anyone -- tries to take this away from you, you'll kill them.


	15. metalepsis

_15.metalepsis_

You find Steve in the bathroom after your run, his fingers over the lingering, barely-there bruise on his neck, which has defied all expectations by remaining through the night. "I thought you were using up all the hot water or something," you say, pulling your sweaty shirt off and tossing it into the hamper.

"No," Steve says, his fingertip stroking at the mark. "Do you see this, though? It was there yesterday too." His ears get very pink very quickly.

"Yeah," you answer, watching him. He doesn't have any clothes on, so it's pretty obvious to you that it's turning him on about as much as it is you - maybe more. "I know, I gave it to you."

"I like that it stayed," he says, and after that you don't feel like the choice between pulling him back into the shower and letting him fuck you up against the slippery glass doors or just taking a shower on your own is much of a choice at all.

Your skin squeaks against the steamy glass, and he holds your weight easily, more easily than even the strongest man in the world would be able to, and you don't know why you like it so much. Maybe it's just that it's Steve; everything that Steve does, you like, your body seems to like, as if you're dialed in hard to his particular frequency. It feels that way, your voice catching on his name. Like you belong to him.

When you get out of the shower, stumbling a little, wringing your wet hair out, you notice a crack in the door that could have come from your hand or your head, and you laugh. "Probably not going to be the last time," Steve says reasonably, touching the crack, his whole body pleasantly rosy from the hot water. God, you could get it up again.

"You want to grab a coffee?" you ask him, because otherwise this is just going to keep going, and the entire day will be more or less wasted. You towel your hair off, pick your running tights up off the floor and hook them into the hamper too.

"Yeah, I could get a coffee," Steve agrees. "They have those muffins, too." His stomach growls demonstratively.

It's later than either of you would usually be at the coffee shop, and there's a line this time, a parade of bleary-eyed businesspeople all neatly wrapped up in suits for work. You feel like a smug asshole next to them; you and Steve, dressed casually, fresh and bright-eyed from the shower and sex. The girl behind the counter looks a little frazzled by the time you make it to the front of the line, but she's pleased the second she recognizes -- well, Steve, probably, but she knows you too, so maybe it's both of you.

"Hi, Steve!" she says. "James." She waves a little. Her nails are plum purple this time, to match her lipstick. "You guys have been all over the news! I thought maybe we wouldn't see you again."

"Well, you can only hide for so long," Steve says wryly, pulling his wallet out. Several people are looking at you now - the reaction she gave you must have been enough to draw their attention, and the sight of Steve enough to sustain it.

"Wait, don't tell me," says the girl. You wish she had a nametag, because you feel like if she knows your name, you should at least know hers. "Large vanilla latte, no foam, two pumps, and a large Americano, extra hot." She jokingly holds her hand over the tip jar while Steve pays, and you wink blatantly at her when she takes her hand away and he passes the change to you to drop in instead.

Steve's grinning at you as you stand waiting for your drinks to be made, holding a little brown bag with a muffin in it. You grin back at him. A man talking loudly on his phone draws a gun.

You reach for it with your left hand, unthinkingly, and twist it out of his grasp. He drops the phone and grabs your hair, and the coffee shop erupts into chaos.

People are screaming, glass is breaking - someone else has opened fire. You headbutt the man, and are forced to throw the gun away in order to break his grip on you. You plant one foot in the center of his chest and push him off. He's stronger than he looked.

There are multiple assailants. Steve is shouting at people, to get down, to run. The employees of the coffee shop are behind the counters. You meet Steve's eyes; he doesn't have his shield. He vaults over the counter, and you follow suit. Your hands find knives. Steve is shielding the girl with the purple nails, the girl who knows your name, with his body. Wood splinters around you, some shards finding their way into your skin. You listen to the trajectory from which the bullets are coming. You rise from behind the counter and throw the knives in a singular movement. Like releasing a breath. Refreshing.

The woman with the semi-automatic is hit in the throat; the other, having moved since you calculated her position, in the shoulder. "Are you okay?" you hear Steve's voice asking distantly, but you don't think he's talking to you. You go over the counter again, unzipping your jacket for better range of motion. The woman with the knife in her shoulder is reloading; you reach for her gun arm and twist her wrist, using the momentum to flip her whole body. She drops the gun.

You pick it up and shoot her in the forehead. Steve skids to a stop right behind you. "We need to get these people out of here," he says. He has his phone out.  

"Get down," you say; a man running toward you from across the street fires his gun. The coffee shop window shatters spectacularly. You dodge out of the way of the bullet and the glass and raise your arm to fire back.

Steve's talking on the phone, hurriedly. He is requesting backup. "We need help getting civilians clear," he is saying. The man approaching from across the street is wearing Kevlar. You draw a bead on his forehead. "Bucky," says Steve. "Bucky!"

You look down at him. "Help me get these people out of here," he says, turning a table onto its side.

You nod. Most of the people have fled, save for those whose path was obstructed. You go behind the counter again, as Steve sets the tables up in a makeshift barrier, and beckon for the employees to follow you. "Aren't we safer here?" asks the girl with the purple nails, and you shake your head.

"You're not who they're after," you say. "You're safer where Steve and me aren't." She has a cut across her forehead, and the grimmest expression you've ever seen her wear. She looks like a totally different person from the girl you're used to seeing. "Go, get out of here."

The man from across the street has almost made it to the coffee shop. The weapon he's carrying has bullets with enough power that they will destroy the tables Steve has set up, very rapidly. You draw a bead on him again and fire. He's very still for a moment, and then he falls, the gun clattering beside him.

You don't make the mistake of assuming it's over. You cover Steve as he gets the remaining people out of the coffee shop, and then you follow him out, too, into the street, both of you sweaty and pockmarked with tiny pieces of wood and glass. You toss your gun over to Steve and start to walk to the more powerful weapon.

You are paying more attention to him than your surroundings, and this is what allows another assailant to get the drop on you. Garotte wire - you barely get your hand up in time. It reminds you of - someone. Something. A hundred someones, a thousand somethings. Your flesh hand. The wire cuts in painfully.

You throw yourself backwards, trapping the attacker beneath you. He locks his leg around your neck along with the wire. You arch your back like a fish flopping out of water. _Stupid,_ you think, you made a stupid mistake. You close your metal fingers around his thigh and squeeze, and squeeze --

Steve shoots him, and the pressure around your neck goes limp immediately. You let go of the leg and blood drools out of it, and you sit up and cough, get to your knees and then your feet. "Are you okay?" Steve asks you, his expression cold, serious.

You massage your throat and nod, picking up the gun you were after in the first place and turning in a circle. You hear sirens, getting closer. The street is now mostly deserted except for a few curious onlookers who peer from doorways or windows. One woman clutching her cell phone.

Iron Man lands in the center of the intersection. "What'd I miss?" he says, and then someone else immediately starts firing. "All right!" he hoots, "Let's keep this party going."

It's really not a party. You shoulder your weapon and before you can fire, someone throws a flash-bang that lands right behind you and Steve and the two of you are knocked to the side. You hear the sound of Iron Man's repulsors firing, and then Sam Wilson's voice, calling out to you and Steve.

"We're okay!" Steve says, coughing and fanning smoke away from his face. You sit up from where you landed on your back, shouldering the gun again, just in time to see a woman running toward you, aiming her gun at Steve.

She is hit by a repulsor blast and goes flying, and then there are more of them, coming at you from different angles. A blue pulse of energy skids along the ground and wraps around the ankles of one man, and you realize that Black Widow is here, along with Falcon, and presumably Hawkeye is somewhere nearby as well.

"Are the civilians clear?" shouts Natasha, and Steve nods. She's dressed in everyday clothes  - she must not have taken the time to change. If you didn't know her you could think she was just another woman caught in the crossfire. You are wasting time thinking about this. You pick one of the enemies and engage.

The assailants’ fighting style is familiar. Fast, somewhat sloppy, all deadly intent. They might have given Steve pause if he was by himself, might even have held their ground against only two of you, but with most of the Avengers here, they are in a losing battle, being picked off one by one, unless they find some kind of opening, and Steve, even without his shield, is not keen on leaving openings.

You break both of the man's arms, dislocate his shoulders. He screams as he falls to the ground. _Weak_ , you think. Just an animal in pain. Three of them are on Steve, now. He is using a car door to defend himself, having discarded the pistol he was holding. You find a piece of glass on the street and grasp it in your left hand. In between Steve's feints with the car door, you cut the carotid arteries of two of the assailants. Red splurts over your hand, onto the sidewalk. The metal of the car door hits the forehead of the third with a dull clang, and he falls hard, like a sack of potatoes.

Steve looks at you. His eyes are big. _Ping_ goes a bullet off your left shoulder. "Get down!" shouts Natasha. An arrow goes whizzing past you and embeds itself in the flesh of the woman holding the gun. A bullet punctures the skin of your side, searing hot, comes out and goes into the car door, stopping just short of hitting Steve, too.

You put your human hand to the wound. Steve stares at you. It's a non-critical wound, but he just stares at you. "Rogers!" Natasha shouts, and then Sam's voice joins her, "Steve!"

Steve shakes himself and crouches down, behind the car door, just in time to avoid the last person standing -- the woman who came at him before, the one who Stark knocked off him with the repulsor blast. She whirls and comes at you instead; her fighting style is different but instantly recognizable, because it's like Natasha's fighting style. Speed and agility over brute strength.

You are forced to uncover the wound on your side in order to defend yourself. The weapon you are holding is cumbersome in close combat, and you can't get enough room even to aim; she is slapping at you, feinting kicks at your stomach, your legs. Making you expend all your energy fighting her off, waiting for an opening.  

In the end it isn't you who gives her an opening; she gives you one. Your hand catches the reflection of the sun glinting off one of the buildings, and she jumps back, her mouth dangling open, her hands still curled into fists.

"Winter Soldier," she says in surprise, looking at you, recognizing you. Her expression is open only for a fraction of a second before it shutters and she continues, "When you are returned to our control, you will be punished for this betrayal."

The second of hesitation was all you needed to draw a bead, and the words are hardly out of her mouth before you fire. A neat red circle appears on her forehead, and she looks surprised again as she collapses. As her face goes slack, you realize how young she is. Fourteen, maybe fifteen, with a fine-boned face and straw-blonde hair that soaks with blood as she lays on the pavement. You sit down.

You sit there on the ground and laugh and laugh until you feel like you're about to cry. The Avengers form a wide circle around you, looking between each other nervously, until Steve finally comes over and crouches down next to you. At first he's quiet, and then he puts one hand on each of your shoulders and turns your face into his chest. He cups the back of your head and says, "I know, Buck. I know." Then he pauses, sighs, and says, "But we should maybe do this somewhere that there aren't reporters taking pictures."

You pull back enough to see a flash and suddenly all you can hear is the whirr-click of DSLR lenses, and you go very stiff and let Steve pull you to your feet.

The motion reminds you of the wound on your side, blood soaking into your t-shirt, and you cover it with your hand again. Steve puts his hand over yours, and holds you against himself. "You want to have that looked at?" he asks.

"No," you say, trusting him to know - it's fine, the bleeding has slowed, and it will scab over shortly, will begin healing itself, a stubborn, dogged process you have learned to unwillingly trust.

"I don't know if we should go back to the apartment," Steve says quietly, and you stagger a little, thinking about it. They knew -- the coffee shop is so close to Steve's home. They knew you would be here.

Steve sits the two of you down on a stoop and Iron Man appears shortly afterwards. He flips the faceplate up so you can see him. "I know you have the whole superhuman healing ability thing, but can I just say it would make me feel a lot better if you were bleeding all over the place at Stark Tower instead of some random Italian grandma's front steps?"

The expression on his face looks like real concern. You don't have it in you to resist anyway, not when -- like Steve said, you can't go back to the apartment. Not now. "Don't worry," Tony says to you. "We have plenty of plain black t-shirts in the tower, too, I'm sure we can get you a new one and you'll feel right at home."

You look at the wreckage of the street. "Are we taking the subway?" you ask, and Tony gives a surprised laugh, right before a small black jet lands right in the middle of the intersection where Iron Man landed twenty minutes ago.

"You're funny," he says, and you think you wish you really were.

In the jet, they all talk about you as if you aren't there, their voices soft in ways that they think you can't hear, all except Steve. Sam wonders if they should sedate you; Natasha and Clint say it's not a good idea. Tony wonders if they even have anything that would work on you. You turn your face against Steve's chest, and he just holds onto you, his other hand still steady atop yours, atop the wound where it is starting to heal.

"I'm not going to let them do anything to you that you don't want," he says, very quiet, and you think you knew that. You knew that all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit depictions of violence committed by the main character, one committed on a teenage girl.


	16. parapraxes

_16: parapraxes_

You don't sleep that night.

Steve told the truth. He doesn't let them do anything to you that you don't want them to, at least in the broadest sense of the words. As soon as you get back to the tower, he acts almost as a shield, keeping prying hands away until he's had a chance to ask you if it's okay.

You say yes to him. When he asks, you say yes.

They want you to talk to someone. You are feeling dizzy from blood loss, your hand and Steve's coated thoroughly where they were pressed to your side. It gets stickier and stickier as it dries. They cut the shirt away from your side and see the wound scabbing over, and Steve says, "Is it okay, Bucky? Will you talk to the doctor?" and you look over his left shoulder and say, "Yes."

It's the same woman as before. Calm eyes. She asks you why you laughed, and you tell her you don't know. Was it funny? She asks. Isn't everything? Isn't it all just a comedy? You try and you try, but --

"It wasn't funny," you say. Steve sits across from you. You look at him. You want very much to take his hand again. But he's too far away for you to reach, and you don't want the doctor to see you move closer to him. To see how weak you are right now. Maybe always.

"I laughed to keep from crying," you say instead of trying to explain it to her, and she seems satisfied with that answer. You don't even really have it in you to be humiliated right now. They have bandaged your side and cleaned you off and given you a new shirt. The Avengers are waiting for you outside.

"So I have a floor for you, Cap," Tony is saying, as you ride the elevator. You lean against the wall and look up at the camera, thinking of JARVIS looking back down at you, thinking that even now he is securing the perimeter and watching for threats. Thinking he would tell you if they had followed you. "But I don't have one for you, Barnes, uh. There are some empty ones -- guest suites, I guess you'd say, but --"

"It's fine," you say. "I'd rather stay on Steve's floor anyway." You blink away from the camera, looking at Steve and then Tony. Tony looks, for once, genuinely rattled.

"Well, that works out, then," Tony says. You step off onto a floor that is minimally but tastefully furnished. "I figured you wouldn't be one for frills, but if you hate anything, let me know, everything is totally replaceable. Totally."

"It looks nice, Tony," says Steve. "Thank you for your hospitality. I'm sorry to be rude, but I think it'd be best if we both just had a little alone time right now." He takes your elbow and steers you gently, as though you were a child or an invalid. You bare your teeth at him and he looks surprised and lets go again.

It seems like Stark should be protesting, demanding to stay, demanding that Steve and you do something -- movie night, have a beer, something. But instead he just stands there for a second and then he says, "Right. You know where to find me if you need anything. Well, JARVIS knows."

He gets back into the elevator. "Bucky?" says Steve, almost like he doesn't think it is you at all in this moment.

Your shoulders slump. You sit down heavily on the couch, and Steve sits down next to you. He touches your arm, and you find that you're shaking, everywhere except your goddamn steady hands. You lie down and put your head in Steve's lap, and he strokes your hair while you watch the sun go down. Big windows. Windows everywhere.

Too many windows. Too many people -- the building is practically alive, like an anthill, crawling with people all hours of the day and night. It doesn't matter that you can't see or hear any of them, you know they're there. Breathing, heating the air with their ambient warmth. You lie in bed with Steve all night and stare into the shadows at the corner of his room. The bed is too soft.

Steve wakes up around five in the morning. The sky is just starting to turn purple at the edges. "Bucky?" he asks, and his forehead creases when he looks at you. "You didn't sleep at all, did you?"

"No," you say. The thin skin under your eyes feels heavy, as if someone's put weights on your lower eyelids. "Can't."

"Oh, Buck," says Steve. He strokes your face, warm hands along your jaw, your eyebrows, your forehead. "I know how that is."

He lies there with you for a while, just touching you, a steady presence, and it's pretty clear he's not going back to sleep now either. You watch his face. He has a quiet, introspective look, and you wonder what he's thinking about. Categorizing tragedies major and minor, probably - he has a lot of them to go through. A whole catalogue, just like you.

"You want to go down to the gym?" he asks you after about half an hour. "Might help to wear yourself out physically. Not that -- we didn't do that already, but."

You know what he's saying. It's different to do it with someone you trust. It'd be better than lying here not sleeping, anyway. "Sure," you say. You get out of bed, peel back the bandage on your side for a moment to check the progress of the wound healing. You feel Steve looking at you, and when you glance over at him it's a sort of perversely admiring look, appreciative in a bizarre way. Not sexual, necessarily, but certainly charged with something.

You put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, not bothering with shoes, and go to the elevator with Steve, in his sweats. JARVIS pipes in some kind of soft, drifting music, and you smile vaguely at nothing in particular.

The gym is silent and dark when you get there, everything much shinier and newer-looking than it was at the gym Steve took you to in Brooklyn. You touch one of the punching bags, maybe the same one Steve was going at with such prejudice last time you were in the tower, and turn to look at Steve.

He flips on the lights and walks in a circle in the middle of the room, before starting to drag some of the equipment out of the way, creating a larger space. You help, moving it all to the edges of the place, until all there is is a wide open space, flat level floors and Steve at the center of it.

He tips his chin up at you, daring you - a familiar look from him, jackass that he was, and honestly, still is. Always had a chip on his shoulder. Always picking fights where he shouldn't have, sometimes even trying to pick them with you if he was feeling particularly hot-headed. He wouldn't ever come at you physically then, only ever with words, and now you think maybe you've traded one for the other - but you're glad, because you don't think you'd want to know what he'd have to say, anymore.

You just stand there with your hands by your sides, not rising to the challenge, until he comes over to you and pulls you by the front of your shirt into the middle of the impromptu ring. He kisses you on the mouth, and says, "Now fight me," pushing you hard in the center of the chest, hard enough to send you reeling backwards, just out of distance of the kick he aims at you.

You grab his ankle instinctively and use it to turn him, but he rolls with it and gets his legs around you as he goes down, taking you with him. You pry his leg away with your left arm, roll out of his grasp and put one of your own thighs around his neck as he tries to roll away too. It's not a good hold, though, and he breaks it almost immediately, getting back to his feet in one smooth movement.

You launch yourself off the ground too, springing up and aiming a punch at his midsection. He grabs your wrist and you spin around him, dragging him off-balance and getting your left arm around his throat. The plates whirr slightly, and he plants his feet and throws you forward, over his back - he's heavier than you now, and still slightly stronger than you even with the advantage of the arm. He's the only one that would be able to do that.

You know what your advantages over him are, too, though. You remember them well. You react less to pain; you are nominally faster; your fighting style is more ruthless. You let the momentum of the throw carry you into a somersault, and come up with both hands up, in time to block the right hook he aims at your jaw and the gut punch he's trying to give you with his left. You twist his wrist away. "If I had a knife you'd be dead right now," you say.

He laughs. The maniac. "Wanna bet?" he says, and sweeps your legs out from underneath you.

You let them go, falling down as dead weight, dragging him with you, twisting your leg over his right arm and pulling his left behind him, just a hair shy of making it intensely painful. "Do you?" you ask, drawing a finger of your left hand over his throat and then pulling away, letting him go, getting to your knees and then your feet.

"I'm not afraid of you, Buck," he says, climbing to his feet himself, tugging his sweats up where they're riding low on his hips.

"You don't have to be," you reply. Whatever there is about yourself that you still don't know, at least you know that, with some certainty. As much certainty as you get, these days. You look at Steve, his bare shoulders heaving, that challenging grin on his face, and you motion to him: _Come on._

The two of you fall into a rhythm. You and Steve are as evenly matched as two people can be in combat, and it should be frustrating but feels exhilarating instead. You know you can trust him, to challenge you but also not to hurt you. That you can trust your body not to let him hurt you.  

Steve has you in a chokehold and you've got one hand on the back of his head, about to make an attempt to throw him over your own shoulder, when he says, "Wait."

You stop immediately, and he lets you go. It must be around six-thirty now, and there are a number of people waiting outside the gym, in the corridor by the elevator. You can see them watching through the windows. Sam Wilson is there, his face unreadable.

You look around yourself at all the stuff you've moved over to the sides, and then almost in unison you and Steve start hauling everything back into place. It doesn't take long, and as soon as most if it is where it should be, people start to slowly filter in, guiltily, like they think they shouldn't be there at all.

"Hey, guys," says Sam, coming over to Steve. He has a towel slung over his shoulder and he's wearing running shoes. "Early morning?"

"Couldn't sleep," says Steve with a shrug. "Thought we'd try and do something to tire ourselves out."

You wish you could stop looking at him. He's got a few red marks on him, marks of impact that would probably be bruises on anyone else, and he's a little sweaty, barefoot, in just his pajama pants. You're not much better off, wild-haired, the hem of your t-shirt stretched out from being grabbed so many times.

Sam grins. "Good," he says, "That's good, to have healthy physical outlets."

You wonder if he's making an innuendo on purpose, or if he's being serious. It sounds like something a therapist would say. "Sorry for keeping you from your workout," you say.

"Nah, no big deal." Sam turns the force of his grin on you. "You don't get to see a show like that very often, so I don't mind having to wait. You guys are impressive, I'm sure you know that. I'm sure Steve knows, at least, because I've told him before."

"Stop," says Steve dryly, "you're going to make me blush. All right, we won't take up any more of your morning. Have a good workout." He hitches up his sweats again and starts to walk out and you follow him, trying not to notice any of the admiring stares that are directed his way, yet at the same time intensely conscious that yours is probably one of them.

"Thanks," Steve says, once you're in the elevator. "That was a good -- it was good."

"I don't think I feel tired," you say. Your body is still humming with adrenaline. "But you're welcome. You're right, it was good." It felt good. Trusting somebody that way.

"Kind of weird," Steve murmurs, as you get out onto your floor. It's all bright again, lit up by the cheerful morning sun, which seems much brighter without the summer haze of humidity to temper it. Steve heads for the bathroom, situated at the end of the hall, right away. "Are you coming in with me?" he asks.

"How could I refuse an offer like that?" you reply, following him into the bathroom and then giving a low whistle at the size of -- well, everything. You could probably fit four of you into the shower alone. Steve takes a step toward you and starts to pull up the hem of your shirt, and you pause, searching around the room surreptitiously for cameras.

"Wait," Steve says, freezing in place. "This isn't being -- recorded, or anything, is it?"

"Certainly not, sir," says JARVIS from somewhere. The hallway, maybe, the door's still open. "I have the utmost respect for your privacy."

You exhale a breath of relief and Steve continues pulling your shirt off, peeling it away from your sweaty skin. You take the bandage off your side, too; you'll replace it when you're out of the shower, but for now you don't think the water will do the scab any harm.

Steve guides your hands to his sweats, and you untie the laces and push them down over his hips. He leans in at last to kiss you as you step out of your shorts and underwear, and the two of you get into the shower almost as one. The hot water sluices down your body as you kiss Steve, running into your open mouth when you pull away.

"I'm sorry," he says, taking in the slightly poleaxed expression on your face. "I don't know why it -- gets to me the way it does, I --"

"It's all right, Steve," you answer. "It's the same for me. I don't care why."

Somehow you manage to shampoo your hair and wash yourself off, in between Steve's greedy kisses and roaming hands. He presses you against the wall and you start to put your legs around him but then change your mind. "Bed," you say to him. "Bed, Steve."

He grunts and pulls away reluctantly, his eyes running over you with a hot gaze as palpable as a touch. What does he see? you wonder, even as you look at him and see a miracle, something beautiful and terrifyingly incomprehensible. He backs out of the shower and towels himself off rapidly, and you follow him to the bedroom.

He lies down and beckons you toward him, then wraps himself around you and rolls you over together when you come close. His skin is so warm from the shower, and has that slightly sticky sensation of dampness which gives a strange feeling like you're melting into him, or the two of you are melting into each other. He sucks on your lower lip, his eyes closed, his expression blissful, and you tug on his hair and wrap your legs around him.

He slides down your body and wraps his hand around your cock, licks slowly up and down the underside of it. Your hips squirm against the bed, and immediately you want more, need more, feel as though you might die without it. He obliges, sucking you into his mouth, the fan of his dark lashes against his flushed cheeks maybe the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

"Steve," you say, as clearly as you can manage, before his mouth takes the power of speech away from you entirely. "I want you to fuck me," and he glances up at you, cheeks hollow as he sucks, and makes a soft noise around your cock. He doesn't stop, though; he sucks you until you're right on the brink of coming, and then looks up at you again through his eyelashes and you say, "fuck!" and come anyway, helplessly.

"I can wait a few minutes," he says, a little hoarse and a lot breathless, and you wouldn't care if he didn't, anyway. You'd be happy to let him do it right now, fuck you through the overstimulation, and -- his eyes go slightly wild. "I don't -- there might not be any --"

"Check the bathroom," you groan. "There's gotta be something. Lotion, I don't care, whatever."

Steve gets up and hurries back to the bathroom, returning with a small bottle of hand lotion, and the sight of him is just about enough to do you in. You roll over onto your stomach and get up onto your knees, your face buried in your forearms. You can only imagine how you must look, already disarrayed from having come once, your wet hair strewn across the pillow.

Steve seems to appreciate it, judging from the noise he makes and how quickly he gets behind you, slipping two fingers inside you without much preamble. "Are you -- is that okay?" he asks, and you turn your head enough to give him a wicked glare and growl at him.

"Fuck me," you say, and he gives a sort of full-body shiver, his dick twitching where it's hard against his belly.

"Yeah, okay," he replies, putting one hand on your hip and guiding himself inside you with the other. It burns a little but it's a good burn; if this was the only pain you had to deal with in your life, then -- fuck.

"God," you moan, "Steve," and he doesn't oblige you immediately; when he starts moving, it's slow, carefully positioned so he's getting you right where it makes fireworks shoot off behind your eyes every goddamn time he pushes in. He's not fucking you, you realize, he's making love to you, there's no other way to describe it.

You give up on trying to make your body do anything and just let Steve have you the way you are, pushing back into him instinctively with every movement, your mouth open against the pillow. You don't think about anything but him for a blissfully long time; no matter what you do, he won't go any faster than he is, and before long you're begging him, your voice raw, muffled by fabric and your hair getting in your mouth.

By the time he does start to speed up, you're so ready for it that your thighs are shaking, the arch of your back like a bow drawn tight, your whole body a weapon asking to be fired. His hands on you are still so gentle, one hand holding your hip, the other carding through your hair. It feels so good, maybe better because for such a long time you didn't know what it was like to be touched by someone who wanted you.

This, though - it wouldn't matter, if they tried to burn this out of you; this, you'd never be able to forget. You squeeze your eyes shut, gritting your teeth as your breaths get shorter, your fingers clenching in the sheets. You're so out of breath that by the time you actually do come the noise you let out isn't much of one at all, and when your eyes fly open again all you see is white for a moment.

Steve keeps going, drawing your orgasm out with his precise, intentional movements, and then he bends forward a bit so that his forehead is against your back, and you feel him shudder against you as he comes too. He whispers your name, and you feel its vibrations against your skin.

You do feel tired after that, the exertions of the fight and the sleepless night before it hitting you more clearly now that the adrenaline has worn off. Steve lies down beside you and you roll onto your back, putting your hand on his chest, in the center.

He brings one of his hands up and twines his fingers with yours. "I feel like I should say something," he says, "but I don't know what."

You look out the window, at the sun glinting off the buildings outside, then back at him, silhouetted brightly in profile. "I hope nobody heard us," you say.

"I don't think they did," Steve replies, looking around at the walls. You can tell he's thinking that Tony would have spared no expense in making Stark tower the height of modern ingenuity, bulletproof glass and soundproof walls no doubt included. Steve turns on his side so that he can face you. "Do you think -- would you care?" he asks. "If people knew."

"Would you?" you counter.

"I -- I don't like the idea of everyone knowing who I'm dating," Steve says. "I don't like the idea of it being a matter of public record, I think people deserve some right to privacy, but --" his jaw firms. "I'm certainly not ashamed."

"Dating," you say with bemusement. "Are we dating?"

Steve laughs a little. "It doesn't seem like the right word, does it?" he asks. "I mean, I suppose we never -- came to any kind of agreement, or anything, so if you wanted to -- see other people..."

"I don't," you cut him off, and it's perfectly true. You did a lot of that back in the day; you saw a whole lot of different girls, and you liked some of them quite a bit. None of them were supposed to be a substitute for anything, they were all lovely in their own right, but -- "You're it," you tell Steve.

"Yeah, I," says Steve, "Me too." He wrinkles his nose. "The word 'dating' just doesn't really seem right, though. It seems too simple, almost."

"Well, not everything has to be complicated, I guess," you answer, stretching and moving a little closer to him. You wish you could sleep now, but the sun is so bright. You glance at the clock; it's almost eight.

"You know you can go to sleep if you want," Steve tells you, tracing a finger over your left eyebrow, and then down your nose. "Nobody's gonna hold it against you. It's still early."

"It's too bright," you say, and immediately the windows darken, startling you, making you jump against Steve, your fingers tightening against his arms.

"Is that suitable, sir?" JARVIS asks, and you relax.

"It's okay with me if it's okay with Steve," you say, and Steve shrugs. "Warn us next time, though, all right?"

"Of course," says JARVIS. "My apologies for startling you."

Steve shakes his head, stroking his hand soothingly along your hair, twining the curling ends of it around his fingers. Your heart rate returns to normal, eventually, and when it does, your eyes start to slip closed, too. Everything trying to tell you that you are safe; your mind and heart the only things insisting you never will be. Not quite.


	17. polysemy

_17._ _polysemy_

You wake up and see the shield leaning against the wall, comfortably casting its shadow in the corner. A few boxes that must be most of your things, brought over from the apartment. Steve's not in bed with you anymore, so you get up and go to look for him.

He's not anywhere on the floor, so you put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. "JARVIS?" you say.

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Where's Steve?" you ask, running your finger along the edge of the shield. Metal against metal - you almost expect it to spark.

"Captain Rogers is currently on level twenty-seven," says JARVIS. "He is meeting with Mr. Stark and Miss Potts."

"Oh," you say.

You figure out how to use the coffee machine instead of going down to bother Steve, and he comes back after about forty minutes when you're sipping your cappuccino and looking at a map of New York in wireframe stretched across the spacious living room.

You look over the back of the couch at him and he waves, smiling slightly. "I didn't mean to leave you alone when you woke up," he says. "I just wasn't sure how late you were going to sleep, and I wanted to talk to Pepper."

"Yeah?" you ask. "What about?"

"I guess I just wanted advice about what to say to the press," says Steve. "It's been long enough that you've been back, I feel like I ought to say something." He shrugs, looking guilty. "I didn't mean to leave you out."

"'S fine," you say. "I already made my feelings pretty clear on the matter, although I guess I'm going to have to revise them sooner or later." You collapse the map and make a motion like you're throwing it away from you that causes it to slide to the side and disappear.

"I want them to know that I'm proud to be serving alongside you again," Steve murmurs. "That's all. Everyone acts like you're some kind of-- ticking time bomb or something, but that's not what I see, and I just want to tell them that."

You turn to look at him again, resting your arm along the couch cushions, and lean your chin against your bicep.

"I just want them to know you're part of the team," Steve says. "My team."

++

That night something shakes loose in your mind, like a rat escaping a locked maze at last. It's accompanied by a feeling you don't remember feeling in a long, long time. A feeling alive in memories but previously untouchable.

You don't think it's the dream that does it. "You remember me, of course," says the little bat-faced man, his round spectacles and his thinning hair. "Ah, well, we are none of us what we once were." You may not have had this dream before, but you feel a sense of disgust, rather than fear. Some strange sort of pity.

You remember the train, the snow, all white. This is a dream you have had before. Falling and falling, the wind whistling past you, unable to draw breath even to scream. Previously it had no context to give it meaning; now you remember all the events past and future that surrounded it, but you still aren't sure you know the meaning.

You aren't scared anymore, though. If there had only been that, the falling, there wouldn't have been anything to be scared of, not really. Not in comparison to what was waiting for you at the bottom.

You wake up and see Steve with a little sketchbook open, looking at you in concentration. He smiles when he sees you wake.

You are angry, you realize. They took so much from you and now they still won't stop; they want you back, as if they deserve you, deserve to take you away from the life that you clawed your way back into. You are very angry. You don't let it show on your face.

You close your eyes again but Steve says, "It's all right, Bucky, I know you're awake now," and you sigh, rolling onto your back.

"How long have you been drawing me?" you ask.

"A while," he says.

"Can I see it?" You reach with one hand, expecting him to put the sketchbook into it, but he hesitates.

When you look at him, he says, "Yeah, when I'm done. It's -- been a while. I'm a little rusty."

"Okay," you reply. He closes the little sketchbook, holds it in his hand, then sets it aside. You remember his drawings before the war. All those hand-lettered signs, just to tell people the obvious.

You spend most of the day in a haze, still flabbergasted by how angry you are. You think about Zola, his round glasses. You think of crushing them in your hand. See? _See?_

You start to formulate a plan. You are allowed to have your own plans now. So you will. You do.

++

"There we go," says Tony, snapping a plate carefully back into place on your arm. You test it, feeling how smoothly your arm runs now, the whirr and hum of it reduced to barely more than a breath. It is operating now better than it ever has, even since its installation. "How's it feel?"

You spin it, rotating the shoulder joint to its limit, and nod. "It feels good," you say. You don't tell him it feels better than new, because he probably already knows that, and you don't think his ego needs any further inflating. "Thank you."

"Hey, I'm just glad you're on our side and not theirs," says Tony. "Whoever 'they' is. And it's a pretty cool piece of tech." He shrugs. "Besides, if you keep thanking me I'm gonna get really awkward about it and then you _really_ won't be able to stand me. Just trust me when I say it's nothing."

It's not nothing, but you nod. "Understood," you say, pulling your shirt back on over your head. "Steve would want to thank you too, you know."

Tony waves a hand dismissively. "I know he would; that guy is so good I don't know how he stands himself sometimes. You tell him he's welcome too, and get the hell out of my lab."

You go back up to Steve's floor. Your floor, now, too. It's empty - Steve is out with Sam and Natasha, getting lunch and doing whatever it is that they do when they go to the V.A.; you still haven't been. Someday soon you will go, but not today. Today, you need this time alone.

You pull up the wireframe map of New York again and you crawl through it piece by piece, like a spider, like a worm, something invisible and unseen. Like you were once before and now must be again. You are building a map for yourself, forcing yourself to remember the details that the asset once considered unimportant.

It needs to be close, and it will have the appearance of some sort of functionality, at least from the outside, but only enough so that nobody will ask questions. Inside, everything will fall apart and reveal itself as a shell hiding something else entirely. Like a cowbird, with its egg in another bird's nest. This is no S.H.I.E.L.D., no deep-cover operation. This is like the bank vault, or the building in the Alps they took you to the first time. This is unapologetic.

It doesn't take long to finish. You have spent all the time you have been left alone triangulating its location based on nearby landmarks. It's on an island, somewhat isolated from the rest of the city, enough to make getting there a pain in the ass for anything other than the intentional commuter. No random businesswoman or wayward student stumbling in on accident.

"Sir," says JARVIS, "I have a few suggestions, if I may," and he shows you the easiest route in, the one with the least lights on it at night. A route through the city with few interruptions, where you are unlikely to be stopped or spotted. "Shall I notify Captain Rogers?" he asks you, and you shake your head.

"No," you say. "This one's on me."

++

You don't have a lot of time to waste - they could be watching even now, planning their next attack every time Steve leaves the tower, even if he rarely goes out in the company of anyone less than highly capable. It doesn't matter - they'd find a way, and that they'd try at all is, frankly, enough. You know one thing for sure: They will try. They will keep trying.

If Steve notices anything is awry, he doesn't say. He's been trying his hand at cooking more often since you've been in the tower, though JARVIS has any number of takeout places on speed dial. You don't know if it's just a hobby, or another small way of his to show you he cares - as if you don't know that already - but it's sweet of him. And he's not bad at it. He doesn't seem to have any particular knack for it, but he's not bad at it.

He's made something with squash and beans that looks terrible but tastes delicious, and he looks at the remains of it in the enormous pan and says, "Maybe I'll see if anybody else wants some."

You go down with him to the common floor and find a bunch of them all hanging out there, being far more sociable than you would have imagined in their off time, although Tony still has his head buried in a gauntlet for his newest iteration of the Iron Man suit and isn't really paying attention to the TV at all.

Steve has shoveled the leftovers into a container, and he says, "I made way too much of this, and that's saying something." Natasha is closest, and she slinks over first, looking at it suspiciously.

"It's good, I swear," you say. "I ate some already and I'm not dead yet."

"Remind me how fast your body metabolizes poison again?" she asks you dryly, but she spoons some onto a plate and sits back down on the arm of the couch with her feet pressed against Barton's leg, and eventually he gets a whiff of it and starts eating off her plate too.

It's so normal. It's so fucking domestic.

They toss conversation around like a baseball, and you barely participate, but beside you Steve is laughing and smiling, and he puts his arm around your shoulder and squeezes, and nobody looks twice. Nobody is even paying attention.

He falls asleep heavily that night - he always seems to sleep deeply now, though he wakes easily, as if to make up for years and years of fitful sleep before the serum. It's not hard to slip out of his grasp. You look at him lying there, lit up by the moonlight. His peaceful expression, his heart beating mighty in his chest. You lean down, bracing yourself above him. You say into his ear, barely a breath's worth of sound, "I love you," and then you get into the elevator.

JARVIS takes you down to the armory, and your retinal scan lets you right in, past the bored night guard who sees nothing abnormal happening. The ritual feels familiar; boots, knee pads, elbow pads. Body armor, gloves, hair tied back. Guns, knives, grenades. The rifle, disassembled and strapped to your back for ease of transport. The earpiece, in your ear -- JARVIS carried with you even far afield.

You don't take Steve's bike, because it feels too much like stealing. Instead you take one of the featureless black cars, sliding into the driver's seat and remembering what it feels like to drive a car. "Shall I let Captain Rogers know you are leaving the premises?" JARVIS asks you, and you shake your head.

"No," you say. "Let him sleep."

++

New York is never really empty even when it's mostly asleep, but without the majority of the traffic that clogs the streets all day and most of the night, it's easier to navigate. You know where you're going. You won't be able to drive all the way, but you're prepared for that.  

You drive to the water's edge and park the car. There is a sort of graveyard here, of abandoned vehicles. You saw it on the satellite photos, on Google Earth, and your memory told you one thing for certain: not all of these vehicles will be in disrepair. Some must remain operational.

You creep along the shore, between the boats, running your hands lightly over their hulls. Looking for the one, the right one. You find it eventually; the keys still in the ignition. It comes to life when you climb in and turn them. The way it's moored up means it is difficult, but not impossible, to maneuver it away from the shore without compromising the hull against the other boats or the bottom of the bay.

On the water, it is very dark, with only the occasional spot of reflected light to show you any detail. You don't know if you are operating on instinct or sense memory, or if your internal compass is just that good, but you know where you are going. You know. You've been here before.

You take the boat around to the south side of the island, where the sky and the water is darkest - an inky, velvety sort of black you feel at home in. You take the boat up until it is a few feet away from  shore and then climb out, dropping silently into the water and pulling it in, tying it to a tree. You wade to shore, assemble the rifle, and shoulder it.

The place is practically abandoned now, but in your mind, a ghost image lays on top of it, and it is daytime and there are people coming in and out, and you know that inside it must be as busy as an anthill. Ninety-five percent of its depth concealed, just beneath the surface. There are no guards waiting outside. You put the rifle on your back and take out a knife.

A concrete door, and a keypad, easy to miss against the institutional, featureless wall of the building. You touch the door with one hand, and then the keypad, putting your right thumb right at the center of it. It flashes red, then green, and then makes a beeping noise that is alarmingly loud in the stillness of the night.

The door whispers open. Inside, it looks just like it does on the outside, if you didn't know any better. An empty building, some kind of bland government installation abandoned for the bigger and better. Vines creep along the walls, the floor scattered with dirt and sand. You step in and the door closes behind you. There's only one way to go, anyway - forward, the corridor will only take you one place.

Your feet move you along without you consciously telling them to. Take a left when you reach the end of the corridor. Walk along the hallway with all the windows broken out. Take a right. A left. A right. Go down the stairs. There's another door. You know what you will find behind this one.

Another keypad. Your flesh thumb against its center, the red light scanning your fingerprint. You are sliding to the side of the door even as it opens, your fingers catching at its very edge to hold it wide. You wait only until the guard behind it has barely started to peer around the doorway, curiously, and then you grab him by the back of his collar, pull him close, your metal hand over his mouth. Slit his throat.

Blood spills warm over your right forearm. You set him down outside the door, slowly, silently, slumped like a doll against the wall as blood pools in the v between his legs. You hook the door with your toe as it starts to close and squeeze inside, silently.

In here it is as you had known: The anthill hiding under the cover of the earth. Bright, fluorescent lit, windowless, lending everything that slightly green tinge which colors so many of your memories, like bad photographs. Like a hospital. You walk along the edge of the corridor, wiping the flat of the blade against your thigh. When you turn a corner there are more guards - three of them, all standing in a small circle with their arms folded, talking, laughing. Talking and laughing as if they are just normal people. As if they don't know.

The one who is facing toward you spots you first and his eyebrows go up, his eyes widening until you can see the white all around them. The knife catches him in the throat as he is in the middle of uttering an exclamation of surprise and dismay, turns the rest of the word into a gurgle.

The other two turn toward you, fumbling guns out of holsters, and you have a moment to look at them and feel a sense of disgust at their biceps, bulging from beneath the hems of their t-shirt sleeves, because they have all this and they are still so weak. The moment ends almost as soon as it begins, though, because you have a pistol out and you shoot them each in the head once, and their weapons fall from their limp hands, and their bodies fall limp to the floor. The sound of them falling, like a sack of potatoes, or apples. Breaking down boxes in the back of the grocery store, tossing the burlap bags into the stockroom. Thump, thump, thump. Steve watching you from by the fence, leaning against it, his arms folded. "Real nice," you were saying. "Just standing there, watching me work."

How many personnel can a facility like this be expected to have? You need to find the scientists, the administrators. To find Zola.

You open a door and find only a cache of weapons. Your thumbprint, the door going _beep_! Door after door. What were they thinking?

You open another door and find a man there, cleaning a gun. He sees you and there's a second of hesitation before he raises it, a second that's long enough for you to throw a knife which hits him square in the hand. He yells and pulls it out and comes toward you. You put two bullets into his chest, and a third into his head. He goes down.

You go in to get your knife and another man comes around the corner, closer than you expected. You grab his hand with your left arm to twist the gun away, and he headbutts you. The explosion of pain behind your eyes does nothing to stop you, and you snarl at him and knife him in the gut as he pulls away with blood -- it must be your blood -- on his face.

He clutches his side where blood pours forth. He goes to his knees, staring up at you. "Who sent you?" he asks, blood bubbling out of his mouth.

You laugh at him and leave him there, taking the gun and emptying the clip in front of him.  

The elevator is at the center of the complex, all of the corridors radiating out from it, the shape of a sunburst, or an octopus with many legs. There is no one inside. You take it down, down, down. "JARVIS," you say.

"I'm here, sir," he says in your ear. "How may I assist you?"

You close your eyes for a moment. "I just wanted to make sure you were still there," you say, and raise the pistol as you step out of the elevator. ADMINISTRATION, says one door. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, says another. How remarkably straightforward. How stupid.

You follow the ADMINISTRATION corridor, pushing open the doors to empty offices, desks that look to have been abandoned for some time. This is not a healthy operating facility, as much as its white walls and bright lights may say otherwise. This facility has been slowly dying since Steve and his friends took down Project Insight; maybe before that. Maybe it has been slowly dying for a long time. A chancre deep at its roots eating away at it from the inside out.

There is a woman at the end of the hall, typing at a computer, her face creased with concentration. "Excuse me, I asked not to be interrupted unless absolutely necessary," she says, without looking up.

You don't respond. When she glances up at last, you are pointing the gun at her head, and her expression changes. "Mission report," she tries.

"The mission is ongoing," you say. "Tell me where Zola is."

"That's not your -- mission --" she answers, perplexed. You can't believe she can't tell just from looking at you. You hold the gun steady.

"Tell me where Zola is," you repeat.

She stares at you. She is beautiful, in probably her early fifties, wearing a striped blouse, her grey hair neatly tied back in a chignon. Look at her down here, buried underground in a windowless concrete room, doing whatever it is for these people. She's old enough to remember the Cold War, maybe Vietnam. She's old enough to know better. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says finally. "That's not part of your mission, Soldier. I asked you for a mission report."

You shoot her in the head. She is only surprised for a moment, in the end, no better than the rest, and unhelpful to you.

You take the SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH hallway next. These people all throw their hands up when you open the doors. They look terrified - maybe they know you better, know more intimately what you are capable of. They are interchangeable enough in their goggles and their white biohazard suits. All capable of committing the most senseless acts of cruelty, all without thought.

Buried deep in the guts of the building, you find the room with the chair. You look at it and wonder how long it's been since you've been here, how many times you have sat in it. It has a fine layer of dust on it, all the monitors around it dark, all the cables disconnected. You want to touch it, and you want to do anything but touch it, all at the same time.

A man comes in the door while you are looking at it - a man, you can tell by the sound of his footfalls as he runs down the corridor toward the room. You point your gun in his direction without turning at first. "Winter Soldier," he says. There is recognition in his voice. You turn toward him.

"Not exactly," you say. His hands hang slack in front of him. He is not Zola, but you know him. His neat beard, his wire-rim glasses.

He holds up his hands in front of himself the second you face him. You remember him from a different angle, leaning over you. Applying electrodes to your temples, shoulder, chest. "Where is Zola?" you ask him.

His face goes through a slideshow of emotions - fear, confusion, irritation. "Arnim Zola has been dead for forty years," he says.

You laugh at him, and the expression cycles back into fear again. "You of all people should know I'm not stupid," you say.

"He's dead," says the man. "He's dead, and Captain America destroyed the mainframe that contained his personality matrix. There is no Zola."

You walk toward him and he backs toward the wall until there's nowhere left to back. You fist your hand in his shirt and put your gun underneath his chin. "Who gave the order?" you ask him, perfectly calm.

He doesn't answer at first. Sweat rolls down his forehead, along his cheek, drips onto the gun. "Who gave the order?" you repeat.

"Nobody gives the orders anymore," says the man. You are practically holding him up now with your hand in his shirt; his knees are buckling, and fear is coming off him in waves. "Not since Pierce died -- we get the orders from the computer, that's all, it uses the algorithm and it tells us where to go, the satellites --"

He doesn't know it's still Zola, you think, and it almost makes you laugh. Maybe not the Zola who once lived, maybe there's nothing left of the man in the machine now, but his dirty little hands are all over it just the same. The man who killed you twice, trying to kill you again. Trying to kill Steve. Trying to take you away from each other. "Please let me go," whispers the man, cringing away from your hand in his shirt. "I'm just a scientist, I--"

"You had a choice," you say. You smile broadly at him, Bucky Barnes's smile. It's funny, Zola tried to do the same thing to you. He tried to take the man out of the machine, but he didn't do a good enough job.

The man closes his eyes for a moment, tears squeezing out from beneath his eyelids and mingling with the sweat on his face. "I told him," he says, "I told him he should never have sent you after Rogers. I told him the programming would break down. I told him that Rogers would --"

"Steve didn't do it," you say softly, intimately. Steve may have been the finger pulling the trigger, but -- you're the gun, you're the bullet. "I did this. I came back. I made my choice, too."

The man opens his eyes again and stares at you, terrified and uncomprehending. "This is me, right now," you say. "This is me, killing you."  
You pull the trigger and you think of his hands on you, the electrodes. The chemicals flooding sluggishly into your veins. "Wipe him," says Pierce's voice, and the man says nothing, and everything begins again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit depictions of violence committed by the main character; flashbacks to Bucky’s time in captivity


	18. lotus flower

_18._ _lotus flower_

The server room is buried in the building, like pollen in a comet orchid, waiting for the person who knows its secrets to find it. It is humming with life when you open the door. Not the real kind of life, but that sort of half-life that exists in this modern age and could never have existed before - a life of data flying invisibly through the air, of information perpetuated even beyond the death of its creators or any living being who knows it. Zola is here, as palpably as if his spectre had appeared.

It's beautiful in its own strange, cold sort of way. All the blue light and the heat bleed given off by the machinery always running. "JARVIS," you say, "I might need your help to shut this all down."

"It would be my pleasure, Sergeant Barnes," says JARVIS. You walk in a small circle, taking in the racks and racks of servers around you. One by one, in a pattern that radiates from the outside in, toward you, they all begin to shut off, their blue lights going dark.

When the last one flickers out, the room is totally silent, and there is only the single fluorescent bar light remaining above your head. "Is that it?" you ask.

"I'm afraid so, sir," says JARVIS. "Although if you don't mind my suggesting it, there is a self-destruct failsafe built into the climate control of this room, presumably to prevent the information from getting into the wrong hands."

You laugh, running a hand over your face, flaking dried blood from your lips. "It can be accessed via the keypad on the door outside," JARVIS tells you.

You walk slowly out of the dark room, holstering your gun, and close the door behind you. You press your finger against the keypad. "Verbal authorization required to initiate failsafe," says a bland, female voice, tinny from the small speakers.

You lick your lips, uncertain. "Codename Winter Soldier," you say. The light goes red, and then green.

"Authorization accepted," says the voice. "Destruct sequence beginning in thirty seconds."

"If I may make another suggestion," says JARVIS, "I can project the self-destruct sequence onto a monitor in room 18A, if you prefer to watch it."

18A is a few rooms away. Left, left, right. Third door on the right. It is some kind of security room, empty. All the cameras show no movement in their sectors, and then, abruptly, they all switch over to the servers, in the dark. The seconds tick by, and abruptly the room sparks back to life, the emergency lights coming on as the ceiling sprinklers start to rain down onto the servers.

They begin to melt, one by one, the plastic and metal warping beyond repair. It must be some kind of acid. You watch them twist and distort - it's almost like watching some kind of strange dance. And then it's all over. There's nothing left.

The monitors all switch back over to the camera views they were before. No movement.

You take the elevator back up. You walk through the corridors, stepping over the bodies. You are walking out alone, of your own accord. A feeling you can't remember ever having before.

The ruins of the building, whatever it used to be. The sun is starting to come up, now, and you run your fingers along the walls as you walk out. The concrete is cold to the touch, and some of the vines are brittle and dead, but you know they will come back next spring, as all plants do.

"Sir, I believe you are about to have company," says JARVIS just as you step back out of the door, unsheathing a knife. The first thing you see on the outside is Steve, in full regalia, his shield held up in front of him. It takes him half a second or less; he drops the shield back down to his side and comes running toward you, full-on long-legged strides.

He stops short just in front of you and takes your face in his hands immediately. "Bucky," he says. "Buck, you're bleeding -- are -- are you okay?"

Your nose must have started bleeding again. You put the knife away, reach up and touch two fingers to it. "Yeah, Steve," you say. "I'm fine."

You look over his shoulder and see that they are all here. Black Widow, Falcon, Iron Man, Hawkeye, peering at you from beside the Quinjet where it is set down in a clearing. Even Banner, standing on the jet's ramp. "I was so worried," says Steve, almost angrily. "JARVIS wouldn't tell me where you were, and I thought the worst, I swear. I really did."

"I'm sorry," you say.

"You know you don't have to do these things alone, Bucky," Steve says. "We're here for you. We're all here for you. We didn't come just because we were worried about what you'd do, we came because we wanted to help you."

You look at them all again, as they start to come closer. They've all put away their weapons, and they're just watching you and Steve curiously. He's telling the truth, you realize, and it hits you somewhere in the gut more painfully than you've been hit in a while. These people, god help them all, really care about you. They want to help. "I'm sorry," you say again, and your voice comes out a croak. "I just -- Steve, it was just something I had to do on my own. I'm not trying to push you away, it was just something I had to do on my own."

You think of Steve seeing all that, of him knowing -- and you think that there are some things you're always going to want to protect him from. Because you couldn't protect yourself, but at least you can protect him. You couldn't save yourself, but you can save him, at least from this.

He hasn't let go of your face. One of his hands is stroking your hair back where it's come out of its messy ponytail. "Okay," he says at last. Like it galls him to say it, but he knows it's the right thing to say. Just like he always did. You look down at his knuckles, with your blood on them. You turn your head slightly, and kiss his fingers.

When he steps away from you, he makes the slightest movement with his body, like he's shaking something off. "Aw man," says Tony, "I get all suited up and there's nothing to even blow up? Color me disappointed."

"Please feel free to blow this place up," you say, putting your hand on Steve's shoulder as you walk toward the jet. "JARVIS will probably help you. He's a little trigger-happy today."

Tony has the face plate flipped up so you are treated to the whole range of expressions as he goes from surprised to indignant. "You hijacked my AI to use as your sidekick?" he asks. "JARVIS, I feel so betrayed. I thought I was the only guy you cared about."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stark," says JARVIS. "Perhaps you should set stricter limits on my protection protocols. I was only assisting."

You take out the earpiece and hand it back to Tony as you climb onto the jet. Steve is smiling, his head ducked, and you sit down next to him when he slides into a seat.

Natasha climbs into the pilot's seat but turns it to face you. "I think your nose is broken," she says.

Sam kneels down beside you and looks at you more closely. "Yeah, it's broken," he says. "It's not bad, though, we can definitely --"

"Just set it," you say. "It'll heal." Sam looks a little nauseated at the prospect, and you sigh and turn toward Steve again. He'll know what to do. Even if he hadn't done this before, he's had enough experience on the receiving end to get the gist of it. He takes your chin in one hand, and your nose in the other, and says, "All right, Buck, you ready? One -- two --" and then your nose makes a cracking sound as the cartilage shifts back into place, and you swear.

"You sonofabitch," you curse, and he just grins and says, "I learned my tricks from the best."

Natasha spins her chair around and starts to power the jet up, and you are suddenly exhausted again, and you just sit back in your seat and buckle up. "So tell me something," says Barton. "This base, this was where all those operatives were coming from?"

"There was a server system down there running Zola's algorithm," you say. "It must have been hooked up to the satellites; they must have been tracking us all for a long time." Your eyes slide over to Steve, and then away again. "There wasn't a lot left down there, to be honest. I think it had been cut off from all the rest."

"A lone tentacle," Barton opines. "Wriggling away on its own."

"Hey, watch this," says Tony's voice, over the intercom, and Natasha flies the jet around so that you can get a clear view of Tony blowing the everloving shit out of the big ugly concrete building. You think the explosion, orange against the pinkening dawn, is probably more beautiful than anything else that ever came out of that place.

++

When you get back to the tower, you and Steve head straight for your floor and nobody says much of anything about it. Steve takes you by the hand and leads you into the bathroom. He sets the shield in doorway, leaning against the doorframe, and turns the shower on hot. Then he begins to gently undress you, disarm you.

There's a big mirror on the opposite wall and you watch him do it, his head bowed in silent focus. Your eyes are pale in your white face, your hair dark and messy, the dried blood all down your face almost black where it coats your lips, your throat. You look like a spectre, a ghost, even more so as he takes all the armor off, revealing the expanse of skin beneath.

He has to stand up to get your shirt over your head, and when he does you turn him so that you see only his back reflected at you in the mirror, your eyes over his shoulder. "What are you looking at?" he asks, and then when he sees the mirror, he just takes your face and turns your head so you're looking at him instead.

He takes his own suit off after he's done with you, and takes both of your hands in his as he leads you into the shower. You close your eyes against the spray and go after him blindly, trusting him, and he doesn't let you get hurt. He doesn't let you fall.

He smoothes a hand over your aching face and the blood starts to come away, washing down the drain. He washes your hair after that, carefully, and then the rest of you, too. His touches are nothing like the way anyone else has ever touched you. He is treating you like you are something precious. Something that couldn't possibly ever be replaced.

When he's done cleaning you, he helps you out of the shower again and towels you off, wraps you up in a huge white robe that is the kind of ridiculously indulgent garment you could never have imagined anyone other than Tony Stark - or a fancy hotel - owning. He leads you back to bed, and lies you down, tucking the covers around you.

"You need to sleep," he says softly. "I'll be right here, okay?"

You look at him, and then at the little black sketchbook lying on the nightstand. He follows your gaze and reaches for it, flipping it open to the page you'd asked to see before. You recognize your own face, but -- in the lovingly rendered curve of your lower lip, the fan of your eyelashes dark against your cheek, your expression slack and peaceful with sleep, Steve has somehow made you inhumanly, insanely beautiful. "That's you," he says. "That's you, Buck. That's what I see."

Your right eye fills and a tear slips down your face. "I wouldn't lie to you about that," Steve says. "You know I wouldn't. Now get some rest."

Somehow, despite everything, you do.

++

A week or so later, Steve goes on a talk show. They want you to come on, too - they _really_ want you, maybe more than they want Steve - but you refuse and he refuses and eventually they relent, because Steve has not done any major news media coverage since before Project Insight, and he is still an excellent guest to have.

You are allowed to wait in the green room, with the other guests for that evening and some other people involved with the production of the show. Everyone is looking at you, even the ones who are pretending not to, and you feel it all over yourself like a sense of itchiness you can't shake. You focus instead on the monitors, watching Steve, looking immaculate in his blue suit, walk across the stage and shake the host's hand and sit down.

For about half of the segment, you are caught in-between worlds; you can't help but see Steve's face before, overlaid over him now, as he talked passionately about something -- and you hate that you can't remember what he was talking about before, precisely, because it's not that you don't remember it, it's just that the Bucky Barnes then wasn't paying as much attention as he should have been. "--those boys, giving her a hard time," Steve is saying, as you are patching up his split lip, your hand big against his pointed chin. "What was I supposed to do?"

"A lot of people," the Steve of now is saying, "seem to think that killing is something that only the bad guys do, and I certainly think it's regrettable, but I was in a war, and it's what we do, men and women at war. It's what Bucky -- Sergeant Barnes -- did too. Even before he had been captured, he did it to protect his comrades and he did it to protect me, and the United States of America."

He pauses, picks up the glass of water, takes a drink of it. The host is remarkably silent, leaning on her desk. "What I really came here to say is that I know people see something different than I do, when they look at him. I've known him for a very long time, so it would be hard for anyone to see him how I do, I think. But James Barnes isn't just the Winter Soldier. He's my best friend, and frankly the best soldier that I ever served alongside, and the best and strongest man that I've ever had the honor of knowing."

Everyone in the green room is looking at you openly now, and you are looking at the open honesty in Steve's face as he says these things and truly believes them. "Can I get a minute alone," you say, your voice hoarse, and the room empties very rapidly. The studio audience is applauding on the screen, a sound you hear faintly, as if it is far away.

When the room is empty, you start to cry, sitting there on the couch. You put your hands over your face but you can't seem to stop it. Maybe it's the ice in your veins starting to thaw, finally, after all these years.

Steve comes in, starting to take off his mic already, and freezes when he sees you. "Hey," he says, coming over and crouching down in front of you, "Hey, hey, Buck, it's all right. What is it?"

You wipe your face and start to laugh a little too, looking at him through the haze of tears. "You meant it," you say. "All of that, you really meant it."

"Of course I did," Steve says. "I just wanted them to know the truth."

You go to the bathroom and wipe your face off and get yourself cleaned up after that. You look in the mirror at your red eyes and swollen nose and think you look like a wreck, but for once you don't care if they all know it. You are a wreck, you are a human car crash, you are a fucking natural disaster, but here's the thing: Steve Rogers loves you anyway.

++

For a second you don't recognize the man sitting in the conference room, and when you do you could swear your heart stops for a moment. "Director Fury," you say. You feel Steve standing behind you, his presence a warm solid weight for you to fall back against.

"Just Fury now," the man says. Nicholas J. Fury. Director, former, of S.H.I.E.L.D. Level ten target. Priority. You -- you failed that mission. You didn't know. You never had a clue until this minute. "Sorry to spring this on you, but I've been keeping a pretty low profile since I was declared legally dead."

"What brings you to New York City?" Steve asks from over your shoulder.

"I like to keep an eye on things," Fury says, tapping the sunglass lens that covers his good eye. "And I wanted to tell you how inspired I was by your little speech on the television, Rogers."

"You're checking up on me," you say. Fury smiles, inscrutably. You don't have to understand the expression to know you're right. "I can't blame you."

"I've been checking up on you for a while," Fury replies. Natasha, you think. Maybe one of the others, too. That man you met before - Coulson. "I suppose I just wanted to see the miracle in person."

"The last guy who made the mistake of assuming it was some kind of miracle didn't have such a good time," you say dryly. "No miracles here, sorry. Just a couple of incredibly fucked-up people trying to live our lives."

"Ain't that the story of us all," says Fury. He stands up, hands you a thick folder. "I thought you might find this helpful. Like I said, I've been laying pretty damn low, but I'd like to help where I can."

"I shot you," you say.

"And I ignored the signs that something very bad was happening at S.H.I.E.L.D. until it was too late to turn back," Fury replies. "So I think we're about even."

You put a thumb into the folder and open it. Hydra intel. Maybe something in here you haven't found in your own memory yet, something to relearn. Even if it's not something good, something to make the holes a little smaller. "Well, gentlemen," Fury says. "It's been a pleasure. I'll be in touch." He pauses, looks at you both, and says, "Good luck."

"You too," says Steve, watching him as he passes you, on his way out the door. He seems smaller as he leaves; he's no monolith, only a person. Ain't that the story of us all.

++

"You didn't tell me," you say, holding the folder. You haven't opened it up again, haven't started reading it. It feels like something where you need to wait, to find the right moment.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "I didn't know if he'd want me to, and -- and I suppose I just didn't think of it. You're right, though, I should have."

"I always thought you were the first mission I failed," you say, looking at your reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator. "I had no idea, I was -- I was falling apart even before that." You think of the man, the room with the chair, saying that Steve had been the one to bring you back, when in fact you had been clawing your way to the surface before you had even seen Steve again.

"It must have been a really difficult shot," Steve says gamely, and you snort, and then laugh.

"Are you trying to make me feel better about the fact that I failed to kill him?" you ask incredulously. "Steve, I'm glad I didn't kill him. Jesus christ, he didn't deserve to die. I'm glad." You laugh again, and Steve chuckles too, running a hand through his hair.

"I -- Peggy is still alive, too," he says, and you stop laughing abruptly, your head jerking up to meet his gaze. "She's not...well, but she's still around. I go to visit her sometimes. Sometimes she remembers; sometimes she doesn't." He pauses. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to know."

"Steve, of course I want to know," you say. "Does she -- does she know I'm alive? That I didn't die?"

"I don't know," Steve replies. "I haven't told her, but she's pretty sharp, so she might know. Her nurses tell me she loves to watch the news." He licks his lips. "You could come with me, sometime, if you wanted."

"Yeah, of course," you reply immediately. "I'd really like that, Steve." You want her to see you; you want Peggy Carter to know that of all the ghosts haunting her life, of all the men she knew and lost, you aren't one of them. You've felt that on your own soul, knowing that kind of responsibility and grief, and anything you can do to lessen it for her, well, that just feels morally correct.

++

She is still beautiful, like a piece of fine pottery with iron bones. The look on her face when she sees you is enough to break any man's heart three times. "Sergeant Barnes," she says, and then, "Oh, Steve, you got him back. You got him back." She is quiet for a little while, and then she says, too, "I'm glad I got to live to see this day. I'm very glad."

"Me too," you say. You take her hand and you and Steve sit down beside her bed. You stroke your fingers over her thin skin, soft and papery. "Me too."


	19. the second law

_19\. the second law_

At the beginning of December, you and Steve are cleared to move back into the apartment in Brooklyn. By then you have become more used to Stark Tower; your things are no longer in boxes, and Steve's shield hangs on the wall in the bedroom proudly, like it belongs there. You get used to having JARVIS essentially at your beck and call. You get used to seeing people everywhere - in the elevator, on the common floor, the gym.

Still, though -- Steve looks at you when you get the news, and he says, "What do you think?" and you know he wants to move back there, because so do you. You have friends here now, real friends, not just teammates, but here you are always Captain America and the Winter Soldier, and you don't want to be them all the time.

Like you said to Fury: No miracles here. Just people.

"I think I'd like to go back," you say. "But only if you want to go too. I think it'd be good for us to still have space of our own."

Steve raises an eyebrow; both of you technically still have salaries that come from Tony Stark's deep pockets, but there is also the back pay even if you didn't have that, and there is so much of that you don't know if either you or Steve will ever be able to spend it in a single lifetime. You raise an eyebrow right back at Steve, and he shakes his head, amused, and says, "Yeah, I think I'd like to go back, too."

So you do. You pack everything back into boxes - it's not like you have to move any furniture, so there's not a lot of it, but Natasha, Sam, and Dr. Banner all come up and help, and even Tony stops by, and Clint when he's back from his mission. It's ridiculous to see them all fighting for something to do, and in the end you look at the boxes and think you should have just done it all yourself because you have no idea what's in each box and it all clearly has the look of a motley assortment organized by several different people with several different ideas of what organization entails.

But they wanted to help, and sometimes you just have to let people help you.

You and Steve pack everything into the back of a van the next day and one of the various standard-issue Stark drivers takes it across town while you follow him on the back of Steve's motorcycle. You press your face into Steve's shoulder, because the air has only gotten colder and it feels bitter whipping against your skin. You put your hand on his leg while you are resting at a stoplight and he turns slightly to look at you and then rests his hand on top of yours, twining your fingers together.

He's happy. This is Steve Rogers, happy, even as it's shitting down freezing rain and you're going to have to re-sort all the books by category again. Even though you were forced out of your own home by Hydra, even though you shouldn't have had to move in the first place, this is Steve Rogers, happy.

There are reporters waiting outside of the building and you think faintly that there must be a leak somewhere, for them to have known you were coming back today. Someone had told them to be here, but somehow it doesn't seem so sinister now. You get off the back of the bike as Steve parks it and go to open the back of the van, pulling out a box.

The reporters follow you as a mass moving all together, like ants or bees, as you and Steve, who is lugging two boxes, one on each shoulder, go toward the front door. "Captain Rogers! Sergeant Barnes!" calls one of them. "How does it feel to be coming back to Brooklyn?"

For once you realize you have an answer, and you turn, holding the box in front of yourself. You let them take photos of you. "Brooklyn has always felt more like home to me than anyplace else I've ever been," you say. "I'm glad to be back, and I'm sure Steve is too."

You turn away again, and it's just that easy, to go past them, into the building, up the stairs and to the front door. Whoever has been watching the place has kept it clean, too - there's no dust, no signs of vacancy. You set the box you're carrying down in the living room and look around.

"Feels like we were gone longer than we were, doesn't it?" Steve asks.

You nod, slanting a smile at him over your shoulder. "It feels good to be home."

++

All told, it isn't that much work to get everything settled back in, and it doesn't take very long. Steve, who never cared for cleaning up very much and who can't really be said to have much skill with organizational strategy in anything other than battle, gets a little bit frazzled by the end of it. He's putting his socks all back into his dresser, looking at them with perplexity. He says, "Bucky, why do we hang on to all this stuff?" even though the two of you don't have much at all, and you can't help but laugh, a laugh that feels forced out by the enormous bubble of affection growing in your chest.

"You used to say that whenever you went through all your old drawings," you say. "You used to look at them with this look on your face -" you imitate the face, a displeased, confused scowl - "and say, 'Why do I hang on to this crap?'" You glance at his hands. "Only those are socks, and I can tell you that you're going to want those."

Steve laughs too, tossing the socks into the drawer. "I think I only kept them because you made me," he says. "The drawings. Anyway I suppose the Smithsonian is probably pretty grateful for that now, because they got ahold of all of them in the end."

"We should get 'em back," you say, closing the closet doors. "We could redo the backsplash in the kitchen. 1930s political cartoons by Steve Rogers. It'd be all the rage in home decorating schemes."

"God," says Steve, with a disgusted expression, and you can't help it; you have to kiss him. So you do, you haul him in by the front of his shirt, and you're almost surprised at how eagerly he responds to it.

He twists his fingers into your hair and kisses you back hungrily, the fingers of his other hand sliding underneath your sweater. He pulls it up to your armpits and you pull back for a moment just so he can get it off all the way. You feel slightly breathless from the kiss, and you lick your lips.

He plants a hand in the center of your chest and pushes you back onto the bed. "Yeah, all right," you say, getting it, and you reach for his t-shirt too, hauling it off of him so you can touch his skin instead. He's hot and a little bit sweaty in a few places - must be mostly frustration, because you know that he didn't break a real sweat moving those few boxes around - and you drag your metal fingertips over his chest, feeling the give of the muscle as he groans into your mouth.

You bite his lip and then soothe the bite with your tongue, and he goes for your pants, unbuttoning your fly nimbly and pushing them off your hips. They get caught on your underwear and drag those down as well, and you are briefly taken aback at how fast you went from being fully dressed to almost completely naked.

Steve pulls away and just looks at you, his gaze intense and fairly unreadable. He touches the seam where your left arm meets your body, and you shudder, your hips jerking a little. You can forget about that area most of the time, but when touched it's oversensitive almost to the point of pain, and Steve doesn't seem likely to forget about that anytime soon.

"Get down here," you say, and he obliges, as you reach for his belt. You slide your hand into his pants once you've gotten the front open, and he groans as you rub against him through the thin fabric of his briefs.

"Bucky, I really don't need any help right now to get there," he says, low, with a little laugh, and you grin against his mouth, dragging your teeth along the line of his jaw and biting right above the throb of his pulse on the side of his neck. Right where you left a mark before, that mark he liked so much. His dick jumps against your hand as you bite him, and he makes a shivery noise.

You pull his underwear down and circle your hand around his cock, working him slowly, smearing your thumb over the head on the upstroke. "Bucky," he says warningly; you watch the muscles of his stomach tense, the expression on his face change.

"What?" you ask him quietly. "You afraid I'm only gonna make you come once, and you don't want to waste it?" Your voice is muffled against the skin of his neck and you feel the vibration of his groan right against your lips. You laugh, scraping your teeth over the little red mark you left by biting him. "Lucky for you, I'm a generous guy."

"Bullshit," says Steve, laughing and gasping. You want to suck his cock but you don't want to let go of him just yet; you like having him like this. You like watching him get closer and closer.

He goes off like a shot, without much further warning, all over your hand and both of your stomachs. His eyes are closed and he bites his lip when he comes, slumping down against you.

You grunt at the solid weight of him and maneuver your hand out from between his hips and yours, wiping it off on the sheets. After a few moments he raises his head, flushed with afterglow, and looks at you. "Give me just a minute," he says, and even though you're hard as hell, you're happy enough just to run your fingers through his hair and watch him feel good.

You scratch your nails against his scalp and he groans, his cock starting to stir again, so you do it again, curiously, and watch his expression go slack and glazed-over. He lifts himself up onto his elbows and shifts; you roll with him until he's on his back and you're straddling him, and he runs a finger down your chest and stomach, landing it on your hipbone.

It tickles a little bit, and you get goosebumps in the wake of it, which makes him grin. You pull out of his grasp, sliding down the bed so that you're at a level with his hips, and bend down to suck his dick into your mouth, all at once. "Holy -- Bucky!" he cries, jerking up into your mouth, his hands both closing in your hair. You smirk around him, and he lets out a long slow exhale of breath, a _fffff --_ of air.

"It's too much," he says shakily, and you start to pull off, but he says, "No, don't, I -- I like it," so you don't stop, you keep sucking him until you can feel him starting to go tense all over again.

"Bucky," he says again with that same warning tone, and this time you do pull off, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

He reaches for the drawer of the bedside table and wrenches it open with almost too much gusto - it doesn't quite fall over, but only barely. He tosses the lube to you, and you give him a questioning look, squeezing some out onto your hand and straddling him again. You press one finger inside yourself, and then two, watching him watching you. It's still hard to believe the expression on his face is for you, because of you.

He props himself up on his elbows and takes hold of your hips as you sink down onto him; you close your eyes and tip your head back, panting your breaths out to the ceiling and whatever's beyond it. "Steve," you say.

"Yeah, Bucky," he replies, his voice as thin as yours. "I got you."

You feel like you could almost come right then; you nearly do, but instead you force yourself to move a little bit, rolling your hips, and Steve moves with you, thrusting up as you push down. You plant one hand on the bed, arching your back and using the muscle of your thighs to move up and down, up and down.

Steve leans forward, pushing you back so that you're leaning against his bent legs, and puts his arms around you, mouthing your chest, your neck, biting gently at your chin. With the leverage of his feet flat on the bed he can put more power behind his thrusts, but suddenly this all feels very unhurried, like you could do it all night, or the rest of your life.

It doesn't go on forever, though - Steve abruptly uses his weight to flip you again, so that you're underneath him, and you let him move you where he wants you. One of your legs ends up hooked over his shoulder, and he looks at you wildly for just a moment before he starts fucking you in earnest. You didn't realize how badly you needed it, but now that he's giving it to you, your whole body feels lit up by it. You put one hand against the headboard to steady yourself, but you can't keep from making noises -- not quite moans, but not quite shouts, either; something in between, some bastard child of the two -- every time he hits the spot inside you that makes sparks shoot off behind your eyes.

He grips your face with one hand and kisses you fiercely, swallowing up the noises, and you come saying his name into his mouth, feeling surrounded by him. You could disappear in this moment and it would be okay; if another good thing never happened to you, it would be enough - but the best part, and you start to laugh, holding him close to you as he comes whispering "Bucky," into your ear, the best part is that for once you feel confident that it's not the last good thing to ever happen to you, not even close. You don't feel afraid, for this moment, that someone's going to take him from you - you know that you won't allow it to happen. Never.

"Are you laughing at me?" says Steve, amused, into your ear, and you shake your head, but you're still laughing.

"What if I am?" you ask. "What are you gonna do about it?"

++

There are still dreams. There's enough in your head for a lifetime and a half of bad dreams, and the things you work hard not to dwell on while you're awake come pouring out of your subconscious when you're asleep.

You're in Prague, the little girl's big round eyes as she sees you come in the window, and the mission did not allow for any witnesses. You're in London, opening the taxi door for the young woman, her short dress and her shiny blonde hair; you're climbing out of the smoking wreck of the taxi, looking back at her mangled body, touching her broken neck to ensure there is no pulse. You're in Washington D.C., on the helicarrier, and Steve is looking up at you. "You're my friend," he is saying, and his eye is swelling shut, and you are holding your arm up, ready to deliver the blow that will crush his skull, but you can't, you can't.

There will always be dreams, and beyond that, there will always be memories of the incontrovertible past, the things you can't change and can't hope to make amends for. But now, when you wake up, the past is that: The past. There is more to you now than what you have done, and it doesn't all feel so close to the surface now. The knowledge doesn't freeze the blood in your veins, not like it used to.

You're still the Winter Soldier; you'll always be him, because you always were, even when you were James Barnes. That cold part of your heart will never go away. You can't change your nature, and --

You remember walking through the forest with Steve, the rifle at your shoulder, silent in the cold night. You often took point, because you were the quietest, the one with the most specialized training, the best shot. You were the one who could be trusted to spot the sniper in the window, the men waiting in the copse of dead trees. You had held up your hand, and they had all stopped behind you, and you had disappeared into the night. You left three dead Germans in the woods, and when you came back and gestured for them to come forward again, the unit had started moving, and Steve had clapped you on the shoulder when he saw the dead men.

That cold part of your heart had done you some good, back then, and you think it still may now. That crystal of ice lodged deep in your gut will always be with you; you might as well learn to cherish it, as Steve does, or at least, as he seems to.

++

The first snowfall of the year happens on December 12th. You wake up at three forty-eight in the morning, and everything is strangely bright, the heavy cloud cover reflecting all the whiteness of the snow blanketing the ground, turning everything the softest dove-grey.

You climb out of bed, Steve's arms slipping from around you, and go to the window, pulling the curtain back and shivering as the chill radiates from the glass. You watch the snow falling, big heavy flakes, onto the deserted street. Everything is pristine; there aren't even footprints on the sidewalk yet, nor tire tracks in the street.

Steve shifts, in bed. "Bucky?" he asks groggily. "You all right?"

"Yeah," you say, leaning your cheek against the cold windowpane. "You should see this. It's incredible."

Steve groans, rolling over and rubbing his face. He looks at the clock. "It's almost four in the morning," he says, but he gets up anyway, the bed protesting with a slight creak which you think means that having both of you in it, sometimes performing vigorous physical activities, may be taking its toll. He comes to stand behind you, slightly to your side, smelling like the shower he took last night and bed linens, and like Steve, whatever it is that Steve smells like and always has.

He is quiet, leaning against you. He hooks his chin over your shoulder, his eyes fixed out the window. "Wow," he says, and on anybody else you might think it was sarcasm, but you can tell he's being genuine. His eyelashes brush against your jaw as he blinks.

"It's something else," you say. He puts his warm hand on your stomach and gives you a squeeze, and you are struck by a sudden urge. "Hey," you say, "I want to go outside. Before anyone else gets out there. I want to go for a walk."

Steve laughs softly. "'Course you do," he says, and, "all right, let's get dressed." He pulls away and puts on his sweats, a t-shirt, one of your sweaters --

"You're going to stretch that out," you say, "Get your own," but you let him wear it anyway, because you like the way he runs his fingers over it. You pull on a discarded pair of jeans, some socks, and a different sweater.

Your jacket, scarf, and boots are by the door, and you get a kick out of watching Steve move more slowly than he usually does as he buttons his coat and nabs his sock-cap, pulling it down over his ears, fishing his gloves out of the pocket of his coat. "Don't think this means you're getting out of meeting Sam for breakfast with me," he mumbles, pulling his keys from the hook and putting them into his pocket. He holds the door open for you, and you go past him, down the stairs and out the front door.

The air is thick and wet; it's not that cold yet, probably still around thirty, and there's nothing biting about the way that the snowflakes fall lazily down, landing heavily on your shoulders and arms. The streetlights cast a hazy yellow glow onto the scene, perversely making it all feel warm, when it's really the opposite.

Nobody else is outside. It's the emptiest you've ever seen your street. There are no lights on in any of the buildings, and you feel for a moment like you're living in a different universe, a fantasy world. Your feet crunch and sink into the snow, and for a second you feel guilty to disturb it, but if you don't do it now, then someone will anyway in a couple of hours.

You walk out into the middle of the street. "You loon," says Steve, "What are you doing? You'll get hit by a car."

"I'd feel worse for the car," you say, turning to grin at him as he follows you, looking carefully both ways before he steps off the snow-buried curb.

He glances around you, spinning in a slow circle, and then takes your hand. You walk down the center of the street together, and as you walk, you think back, back, back, to the man on the mountain. He had known, even then, even before you had, and you think you wish you could tell that man that he was right. Maybe it's atonement enough that you didn't let them win, in the end.

The feeling comes back to you, then, clearer than you have ever felt it. It wells up inside of you, starting from the center and spreading out into all your limbs, and maybe into Steve where his hand holds yours. You know it for exactly what it is: that sense of peace, that feeling you had been chasing for so long and had thought you would never, ever get back.

You thought then that it had come from being empty, that nothing could feel so clean and so comfortable while existing in the messy and complicated reality of human life. But, looking up at the soft, soft grey of the morning sky, with Steve next to you, you know you were wrong, because you are not empty. You are not empty at all.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky flashes back to several instances of violence he committed while in Hydra’s captivity.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] rate of recidivism](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6045262) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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